► R E L I G I O U Si 
EXPERIENCE 

GEORGE PRESTON MAINS 



III 



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Religious Experience 



ITS EVIDENTIAL VALUE 



BY 
GEORGE PRESTON MAINS 




THE ABINGDON PRESS 
NEW YORK CINCINNATI 



3>1 



Copyright, 1917, by 
GEORGE PRESTON MAINS 




v 

APR 25 1917 
©CI.A462103 















TO 

JHp jHotfjer 

WHO BREATHED AROUND MY 
YOUNG LIFE THE ATMOSPHERE 
OF A GODLY NURTURE, AND 
WHO, TRANSLATED IN THE 
NINETY -FIFTH YEAR OF HER 
EARTHLY PILGRIMAGE, LEFT TO 
HER CHILDREN MOST PRECIOUS 
MEMORIES OF A SAINTLY LIFE, 
THIS VOLUME IS REVERENTLY 
AND AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED, 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 

Foreword 9 

PART FIRST 

SOURCES 

I. Source and Scope 21 

II. The Spiritual Sense 41 

III. The Holy Spirit 63 

IV. Conversion 83 

PART SECOND 

EVIDENTIAL VALUES 

V. Christian Character 105 

VI. Spiritual Fruits 145 

VII. Christian Service, 167 

VIII. The Pragmatic Test 191 

IX. The Pragmatic Test (Continued) 213 

X. The Pragmatic Test (Concluded) 231 

Bibliography 255 

Index 259 



FOREWORD 

This book is written in the conviction that 

God has direct and vital relations with the 

human soul. These relations embrace all that 

is significant or of lasting value in human 

character and destiny. While the fundamental 

grounds of these relations are unchanging and 

abiding, man's knowledge ever grows. This 

means that his very opinions must constantly 

be held subject to revision and change. Dr. 

William Newton Clarke, in his great work 

on theology, has ably stated this mental law. 

He says: 

Nor so long as Christianity is a living thing and 
not a relic can any statement of doctrine be final. 
Thought will always be busy with the great themes, 
and as long as men think they will see new light. 
Progress is a necessary form of the life of doctrine, 
each generation adding something to the work 
of the past, and offering something to the future. 
Christian doctrine is thus bound to be an ever- 
moving stream of intellectual and spiritual appre- 
ciation, and in its movement is its power. The 
steadfastness and the variability are both due to 
the fact that doctrine is the expression of a life 
that never fails. 

"Religious Experience 5 ' is a subject which 

9 



10 FOREWORD 

has elicited ages-long discussion. I am im- 
pressed, however, that there is room for some 
fresh and modern restatements within this 
theme. I am quite aware that one writing 
upon this subject cannot hope to make suc- 
cessful appeal to all types of mind. There 
are minds, some quite diverse from others, 
whose doors are barred to any Christian 
reality whatsoever. 

The philosophy of Nietzsche, for instance, 
seems, especially in Germany, to have much 
following. This philosophy is utterly godless. 
He rates Christianity as a great curse to the 
world. He brands it as an "intrinsic deprav- 
ity." He would install in place of God the 
"Superman." It is the legitimate mission of 
the superman to crush and to destroy the 
weak, that the race may perpetuate only the 
strong. Without conscience and without sym- 
pathy, he would enthrone might as the only 
right. 

I am impressed that the average quiet 
Christian mind, comfortably housed and soothed 
in its own faith, may have very inadequate 
conception of the subtle and corroding skep- 
ticism that is widely propagated in present- 
day thought. It is generally admitted that 
organized labor, representing a great army of 
citizenship, is, for the larger part, living in 



FOREWORD 11 

practical divorce from the Church. An alien 
and powerful press, largely supported by the 
unchurched masses, is carrying everywhere the 
infection of vicious doubt and hate even to- 
ward Christianity itself. As Professor Thomas 
C. Hall has said: 

There are weary and rebellious workingmen who 
are being taught day in and day out that there is 
no God, that the churches are fooling them, that 
the ministry is a selfish, money-making, cowardly 
class institution, and that the only way out is to 
overthrow all religion and to abandon all churches. 

In any great city, at noonday or in the evening 
hours, there may be seen gathered at the 
street corners or at the park sides knots of 
men listening to harangues of outworn ma- 
terialism and of a coarse and venomous in- 
fidelity. Unsalaried messengers, by night and 
by day, and under the open skies, and for 
every day in the week, are pressing upon the 
crowds the teachings of nescience and godless- 
ness. All this is going on while the church 
doors are closed, and many of the members 
of the churches are indulging in undisturbed 
dreams of moral security. 

In what may be ranked as circles of culture 
and of privilege, there is a large contingency 
of mind characterized by agnosticism, or by 
the fixed mood of worldly indifference toward 



12 FOREWORD 

spiritual things. While a scientific material- 
ism no longer occupies first-class rooms in the 
apartments of philosophic thought, nevertheless 
many are still giving to the lessons of nature 
a construction which excludes spiritual inter- 
pretation. Among gravely significant numbers 
of the recipients of high intellectual advantages 
is to be found a deadly indifference to either 
the spiritual opportunities and obligations of 
the present life, or to the demands and ne- 
cessities of preparation for an eternal life to 
come. This condition, it is greatly to be 
feared, obtains in far larger measure than 
seems to be apprehended in the general thought 
of the Church. 

While a materialistic philosophy is justly 
relegated to the past, it is still woefully true 
that the lure of a practical materialism rests 
appallingly upon the life of the age. The 
present passing world was never so attractive 
to the popular vision, never so bewitching and 
bewildering in its appeals to life, never offering 
such tempting service and reward to men, as 
now. The Mammon-god is widely worshiped 
in the age. 

It is quite true that not all of these classes 
interest themselves to institute a formal or 
systematic opposition to Christianity itself, or 
to its teachings. They seem to have no awak- 



FOREWORD 13 

ened interest in, or serious convictions concern- 
ing, the claims of the spiritual life. They do 
not oppose the Church; they simply give it the 
treatment of a cold and indifferent neglect. 
The great citizenship of the non-Christian world 
about us may be divided into two general 
classes: the one characterized by a spiritual 
indifference that seems as cold and hopeless as 
the grave; the other embracing all the camps of 
active opposition to Christianity, occupying ad- 
vanced grounds, and using modern weapons 
and methods that were never outrivaled in the 
power of a subtle, obstinate, and deadly de- 
structiveness. 

In the meantime, while it would be fatuous 
to underestimate, much more so to ignore, the 
volume and strength of hostile forces, Chris- 
tianity, in the values of its beneficent mission 
to the world, has nothing to fear in any com- 
parison which may be instituted between itself 
and any or all other forces which would either 
destroy it, or substitute it by other faiths. 
Applying the pragmatic rule of Christ, "By 
their fruits, ye shall know them," to all systems 
alike, Christianity amply demonstrates its 
supreme fitness to receive, as above all its 
rivals, the universal approval and acceptance 
of mankind. 

The genius of the Nietzschean philosophy 



14 FOREWORD 

is to transform man into a destructive wild 
beast. The incarnation of this philosophy 
into Prussian militarism has been decisive in 
plunging Europe into a hell of flame and of 
indescribable horrors. It seems a fitting sequel 
to the life of the chief expounder and promoter 
of this philosophy that he should finally die in a 
madhouse. 

So far as the great army of labor is concerned, 
there is no evidence that its acceptance of a 
materialistic guidance has demonstrated any 
power to promote among them the fruits either 
of sobriety, temperance, temporal prosperity, 
or the spirit of domestic or public peace. It is 
not to be forgotten that multitudes of the indi- 
viduals involved are inheritors of Christian in- 
fluences. They are by all their inheritances 
law and order-abiding men. They cannot be 
controlled either by the dictates or impulses of 
anarchy. Nevertheless, in times of crisis there 
occurs in their organizations what has never 
been known to take place under any Christianly 
governed bodies. In times of tension, however 
sporadic the instances may be, the labor organ- 
ization has seemed powerless to prevent the 
resort by some, at least, of its members to 
violence, to the destruction of property, to 
dynamite, and to murder. However much 
good men may sympathize with the legitimate 



FOREWORD 15 

rights and demands of labor — and these rights 
and demands are many — it seems impossible 
to show that the social and moral interests of 
the laboring world, as a whole, have been up- 
lifted by the methods of godless organizations. 

In the purely materialistic and plutocratic 
life of the present age there are to be encountered 
the same indifference, the same enmities to- 
ward Christianity with which Saint Paul had 
to contend anciently in his mission to the pagan 
world. And this modern world-spirit yields 
the same fruits to civilization as did that ancient 
paganism to the age of Paul. 

Christianity in the meantime, whatever its 
faults or failures — and for the very reason that 
it seeks the moral transformation and uplift of 
an imperfect humanity, its human history is 
characterized by both faults and failures — 
nevertheless more conspicuously to-day than 
ever before holds before the world the one 
prophetic, quenchless, and adequate light for 
the moral guidance of humanity. 

Historically measured, and in frankest ad- 
mission of the moral imperfections of present 
world-society, Christianity stands without a 
rival in working both toward the eradication of 
moral evil and the creation of ideal human 
character in the world. Dr. Frank Ballard has 
so well covered this proposition, that I take 



16 FOREWORD 

pleasure in giving the following statements 
direct from his own pen: 

(1) Whatever be the comparative failure of 
Christianity, it has done, and is now doing, more 
toward the two great ends above contemplated, 
than any other religion. 

(2) It has done, and is now doing, more than any 
form of irreligion. 

(3) It has done, and is doing, when all the factors 
of the great problems are fairly taken into account, 
as much as could reasonably be expected. 

(4) It is now doing more than any other influence 
in civilization, by way of contribution to the con- 
quest of ill and the triumph of good. 

A standing wonder, beauty, and fairness of 
Christianity is that it submits itself at all times 
and among all races to the plain test of human 
experience. It stands at all times ready to be 
judged by its fruits as shown in life and in 
character. It is to some exposition of these 
experimental tests that the present work is 
dedicated. 

For thoughts and facts as set forth in the 
following pages I am indebted to many sources. 
Save in a few instances, I have avoided quota- 
tion marks, indicating direct quotations by the 
closer type. Nor have I burdened my space with 
footnotes of credits to special authors. At the 
close of the volume will be found a list of pub- 
lications, each of which I have more or less 
consulted in the preparation of my manuscript. 



FOREWORD 17 

My special acknowledgments are due to one 
work. I have reread with profit, and always 
with refreshing interest, William James's great 
work, Varieties of Religious Experience. I do 
not think I am so much indebted to James for 
new knowledge as for his fair-minded and 
masterful methods, his wealth of illustrative 
incidents, and the vigorous and lucid style em- 
ployed in his treatment of a great subject. 

The subject into which I have ventured, like 
a temple vast and many-roomed, is so spacious 
and rich as greatly to impress me that my work, 
taken at its best, is but a fraction of a great 
whole. If the readers of this 1 book gain from 
its reading a tithe of the profit which I have 
experienced in its writing, then I shall be 
amply compensated for any labors expended 
in its preparation. 

Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. 



PART FIRST 
SOURCES 



I 

SOURCE AND SCOPE 



So God created man in his own image, in the image of 
God created he him; male and female created he them. — 

1. 27. 



God that made the world and all things therein . . . hath 
made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on the 
face of the earth, . . . that they should seek the Lord, if 
haply they might feel after him, and find him, though he be 
not far from every one of us. — Acts 17. 24-27. 

Then Peter opened his mouth, and said, Of a truth I 
perceive that God is no respecter of persons: but in every 
nation he that feareth him, and worketh righteousness, is 
accepted with him. — Acts 10. 34, 35. 

Religion is so essential to man that he cannot escape from 
it. It besets him, penetrates, holds him even against his 
will. The proof of its necessity is the spontaneity of its 
existence. It comes into being without any man willing it, 
or any man making it; and as it began so it continues. Few 
men could give a reason for their belief, and the curious 
thing is that when it is attempted the reasons are, as a rule, 
less rational than the beliefs themselves. ... If great his- 
torical religions which innumerable millions of men, as 
rational as we, have professed through thousands of ages, 
be resolved into systems of error and delusion that only the 
blind deceitfulness of the human heart could tempt man to 
believe, then it is evident that we dare not use the reason or 
the conscience which we have so discredited either to believe 
or to attest, or to justify the truth of our own. In other 
words, the philosophy that misreads the origin of religious 
ideas and the history of any religion will not, and, indeed, 
cannot, be just to the Christian; while he who would main- 
tain the Christian must be just and even generous to all 
religions created and professed of men. — Andrew Martin 
Fairbairn. 

Behind and at the foundation of all religion lies the 
fact of the soul's vision of the Eternal. The church, the 
historic faith, the communion of saints, the vital power and 
permanence of religion — all rest ultimately on the reality, 
and intensity, and clarity of that vision; on the things that 
eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, but which the Spirit reveals 
to the soul in the silence of the secret and inner shrine of 
the individual life. There is the central source and spring 
of religion, and there ultimately all its problems must find 
their solution. — Benjamin A. Millard. 



CHAPTER I 
SOURCE AND SCOPE 

In deciding a general title I have elected to 
use the term "Religious Experience" rather than 
"Christian Experience." This does not mean 
that I do not regard the ideal Christian experi- 
ence as the highest type of religious experience. 
The religious experience of the race presents 
an infinite variety, much of which little lends 
itself to distinctive Christian classification. 
But no discussion of religious experience can 
be adequate which leaves out of consideration 
the religious life of non-Christian faiths. The 
literature of the religious life is well-nigh meas- 
ureless. It opens itself out into realms of fact 
and suggestion so rich as to challenge largest 
study. 

It is quite aside from my purpose to attempt 
any exhaustive survey of comparative religions. 
A vast volume of primitive phenomena in a 
work like this can be passed by without men- 
tion. But no open-minded review of religious 
thought and experience can fail to make im- 
pressive both the vastness of the religious 

23 



24 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 

question itself and the commanding significance 
of many religious faiths which are not classified 
as Christian. Doubtless many religious views 
now in vogue and pleading for acceptance are 
destined to fail and to fall before the inquisition 
of reason. The horizon of religious thought, how- 
ever, will ceaselessly expand. Religious truth 
which still awaits discovery and appropriation by 
sane and devout faith will be an ever-growing 
volume. There is no more obvious duty for 
the Christian thinker of to-day than to gird 
himself reverently, and with open and hospit- 
able mind, for frankest exploration in realms 
of religious phenomena. From such study de- 
voutly pursued there can result no detriment, 
much less a menace, to sane faith. 

No one can intelligently deny, I think, that a 
great body of reverent thought addresses itself 
to the age, thought which so far has not famil- 
iarly uttered itself within the pale of so-called 
"historical orthodoxy," yet which at core is 
essentially Christian. It would be a large 
assumption indeed for any thinker to arrogate 
to himself a complete possession and mastery 
of essential Christian truth. The sum of Chris- 
tian truth, if possible of apprehension, would 
doubtless be found coextensive with the facts 
of the moral universe. An inseparable feature 
of religion, however poor the contents of the 



SOURCE AND SCOPE 25 

religion itself, is that the worshiper seeks ad- 
dress to a being whom he regards as greatly 
superior to himself. The higher the religious 
faith, the more exalted will be the being wor- 
shiped. A fact of increasing impressiveness 
the more it is explored, is that of a high and 
reverent Godward attitude which characterizes 
many of the heterogeneous religious faiths. The 
larger facts of these faiths, the facts really in- 
spirational and vital, if separated from their 
nonessential associations, could be normally 
incorporated and domesticated in any reason- 
able system of Christian truth. It should be 
no cause for wonderment that there are many 
diverse expressions of religious faith. Even 
within the pale of credal Christianity there are 
many diverse views which separate the denom- 
inations from each other. And, unfortunately, 
the separating facts are usually the nonessen- 
tial, the non vital. If such is the situation 
within the recognized pale of the Christian 
Church, the diversities of nonconforming faiths 
should certainly furnish no occasion for sur- 
prise. But, in the larger measurements, the 
standing and falling articles of the great ethnic 
faiths will, at least very many of them, be found 
closely akin. The central facts of the great re- 
ligions, when stripped of the burden which igno- 
rance and superstition have imposed upon them, 



26 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 

will largely evince a common source. Back of 
all systems, and diversities of systems, man is 
universally religious because God is forever 
inspiring himself into the human soul. 

Man is God's supreme counterpart in the 
universe. He was made in God's own likeness. 
God made man for himself. In a sense of 
divinest significance, he is God's own child. 
He is endowed with moral, intellectual, and 
affectional faculties, faculties capable of infinite 
expansion, that through an eternity he might 
grow into an ever-increasing knowledge of, 
into an ever-increasing likeness to, and an ever- 
enriching companionship with, God. More 
than to all the physical immensities does God's 
thought go out to the human soul. Man is the 
supreme object of God's love and nurture. He 
is still infantile. This is the way God started 
him. It is only with childish beginnings that 
man at his best is at present able to apprehend 
in any measure the wealth of his Father's love. 
But this being is in the making for a great 
future. God values him. God loves him. 
To promote his intellectual and moral educa- 
tion God has lifted up around him the staging 
of the material universe, and has thrown open 
the portals of endless and widening spiritual 
vistas. The forces of the moral universe are 
subsidized for man's glorification. The su- 



SOURCE AND SCOPE 27 

preme and unending trsk, so far as this world 
is concerned, is so to inspire, to educate, to 
discipline, to develop man, that some time later 
in the aeonian order he may come to superlative 
exaltation. It would thus be strangely anom- 
alous indeed if God should not continuously 
stimulate and agitate the human soul with a 
touch of himself. It matters little that in his 
immaturity man has so little apprehended God's 
thought. The truth remains that God has 
kept himself in such unbroken touch with the 
human spirit that man has never been able to 
divest himself of the consciousness, however 
vague, of the divine nearness. The voice of 
the Spirit has never been altogether silent in the 
human breast. Man's religious nature, his 
divinest endowment, has never been permitted 
wholly to die within him. By virtue of this 
very nature, and of God's ceaseless moral touch 
upon his life, man is indeed "incurably re- 
ligious." 

We need not travel far into the fields of his- 
toric evidence to confirm the essential and uni- 
versal religiousness of man. Let it be fully 
conceded that much of the religious expression 
of the race is both rudimentary, superstitious 
and unlovely. It still remains true that a 
great wealth of noble religious expression has 
uttered itself outside the pale of credal Chris- 



28 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 

tianity. It cannot be denied that this expression 
is often coupled with high intelligence and pure 
character. It is farthest possible from either 
my desire or purpose to extol any nonevan- 
gelical faith above the Christian discipleship of 
the New Testament, but it would be neither an 
intelligent, noble, nor candid attitude to ignore 
or to shun the outstanding values of much 
religious character whose credal beliefs do not 
match with the teachings of the evangelical 
standards. The truth is that a high order of 
religious life, both in and out of "orthodoxy," 
is characterized on the part of its representa- 
tives by great diversities both of belief and 
experience. The psychology of religious ex- 
perience in diverse lives is as yet only partially 
explored. I am unable to resist the impression 
that many teachers who have acquired recogni- 
tion as expositors of the faith have too often 
assigned narrow horizons to Christian truth. 
It is beyond question that the creeds of many 
of the denominations are such as to exclude 
from their fellowship many men of highest 
thought and purest lives. But is not this very 
condition one against which Christ distinctly 
warned his disciples? All the great religions 
have developed saintly characters. Even pa- 
ganism, however exceptionally, has its saints. 
But do not all the saints really belong to God? 



SOURCE AND SCOPE 29 

The united ecclesiastical rosters of the world 
would not be found to contain the names of all 
the saints. 

If God by his Spirit is dealing with universal 
man, it ought to be unthinkable that no fruits, 
except in Christian lands, are being gathered 
from these divine processes. Such a conclusion 
would be in itself irrational. It would be a 
reflection against God. It is a conclusion 
worthy of an atheistic parentage. To say 
nothing about the great ethnic religions out- 
side of Christendom, there are many in Chris- 
tian communities, men of pure and noble char- 
acter, who are unable to put themselves in in- 
tellectual sympathy with the historic creeds of 
Christianity. Yet what human authority is 
competent to decide that these men are not 
really citizens of the kingdom of Jesus Christ? 
I do not disparage the formulated creed. Most 
men need credal guidance. It serves as an 
anchor to hold them in hours of stress and 
storm. Comparatively few in the great masses 
do such thorough and competent thinking for 
themselves as to remove them from the neces- 
sity of the schoolmaster's guidance. The creeds 
have served immeasurable values, and are 
worthy of all historic honor. They are the 
wrought products of mighty minds, and they 
have furnished the battle cries of the armies of 



30 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 

righteousness in periods when the very powers 
of darkness have leagued themselves against the 
foundations of Christian truth. The formation 
of creeds is inevitable both from the nature and 
needs of faith. We no sooner have an expe- 
rience than there arises the prompting to give 
some intellectual accounting of the experience 
itself. The religious life forms no exception to 
this law. This is the meaning of philosophy, 
the meaning of theology. The primitive Chris- 
tian experience was so unique, so signal, so self- 
satisfying to its recipient, as to preclude all con- 
cern about its philosophy. It was simply 
thought of, and very rightly, as a direct incom- 
ing of God into the individual soul. Like the 
blind man whose sight was restored, he only 
knew and thought that whereas he was blind, 
he was now able to see. But historic Chris- 
tianity had not gone far on its journey before 
it felt the necessity of a frank dealing with 
philosophy. This conviction accounts largely 
for the form of Saint John's Gospel. 

We must wage battle neither against theology 
nor philosophy in themselves considered. Both 
are the indispensable handmaids of faith. The 
historic creeds were philosophical and theological 
necessities of the ages which gave them birth. 
What we need to remember is that the creeds 
are not infallible. They are human products. 



SOURCE AND SCOPE 31 

They are not necessarily immortal. Rising 
and advancing Christian thought may out- 
grow and supersede them. One of the weak- 
nesses of denominational ism has been an idol- 
atry of creeds. Creed has been exalted above 
character. It has too often appeared that if a 
man were Puritanically orthodox in his intel- 
lectual creed, lapses in his moral character 
might easily be overlooked. Men have too 
easily assumed that if their intellectual beliefs 
could be religiously approved, they are safe 
within the fold. This is not the New Testa- 
ment view. So far as intellectual belief is con- 
cerned, the very devils are orthodox. They 
believe, and tremble while they believe. It is 
this kind of orthodoxy which is receiving caustic 
and merciless arraignment in current literature. 
The accepted literary standards of the present 
are testing the values of Christian character, 
not by the correctness of a man's intellectual 
beliefs, but by the fruits of the Spirit as shown 
in life and conduct. And this is of momentous 
significance as a sign of clear spiritual vision 
and of moral demand which are voicing them- 
selves in the thought of the age. 

However great the function of the intellect 
as a conservator of sanity in thought, it is worth 
our while to take note of the fact that the most 
healthy present-day philosophy does not ac- 



32 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 

credit the intellect as being the chief fountain 
source of truth for life. Moral wholeness comes 
from inward spiritual health. This is some- 
thing that lies deeper in the nature than intel- 
lect. This is a quality in character which the 
most brilliant intellectual processes can neither 
create nor secure. If one has this quality, he is 
in possession of something infinitely more val- 
uable than the mere ability to pursue, however 
brilliantly, a line of intellectual logic, or to 
pronounce a shibboleth. Whoever has this 
quality carries within him essentially the spirit 
of reverence and of worship. His soul bends 
its knees humbly before the Most High. There 
is installed in such a breast the most effective 
norm of character. No man whose inner 
motives are shaped by high and worshipful 
thought can be other than in himself noble. 
He, whatever his incidental defect of creed, 
does not himself rest far this side of saintly 
character. 

Emerson, as also Matthew Arnold, was a 
devout believer in moral law. He believed that 
the universe is finally dominated by moral pur- 
pose. There is a power not ourselves that 
makes for righteousness. He says: 

The perception of this law awakens in the mind 
a sentiment which we call the religious sentiment, 
and which makes our highest happiness. Wonder- 



SOURCE AND SCOPE 33 

fui in its power to charm and to command. It is 
a mountain air. It is the embalmer of the world. 
It makes the sky and the hills sublime, and the 
silent song of the stars is in it. It is the beatitude 
of man. It makes him illimitable. When he says 
' 'I ought"; when love warns him; when he chooses, 
warned from on high, the good and great deed; 
then, deep melodies wander through his soul from 
supreme wisdom. Then he can worship and be 
enlarged by his worship; for he can never go be- 
hind this sentiment. All the expressions of this 
sentiment are sacred and permanent in proportion 
to their purity. They affect us more than all other 
compositions. The sentences of the olden time, 
which ejaculate this piety, are still fresh and fragrant. 
And the unique impression of Jesus upon man- 
kind, whose name is not so much written as plowed 
into the history of this world, is proof of the subtle 
virtue of this infusion. 



Emerson, though honest to the core in his 
intellectual convictions, was doubtless something 
of a pagan in his creed. But in moral character, 
as measured by his life and conduct, he could 
pass in the social exchanges as a saint. It was 
of him that his genial friend, Father Taylor, 
chaplain of the Seaman's Bethel in Boston, said : 
"Emerson may finally go to hell, but if so, one 
thing is sure: the atmosphere of the place will 
change, and population will set that way." 

Abraham Lincoln is a character revered 
throughout civilization. In nobility of ideals, 
in Christlike love of men, in sacrificial service, 



34 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 

in poise of character, in clarity and loftiness 
of conviction, in purity of life, few, if any, 
have excelled him. If he had been, as added 
to his known qualities and deeds, a conspicu- 
ous church worker, his name unquestionably 
would be written high in the calendar of elect 
Christian lives. But was he really less a saint 
because his name was not written on some 
church register? It is doubtless highly impor- 
tant for most Christians to be formally en- 
rolled in church membership. If for no other 
reason, most persons, if they would secure 
for themselves a needed Christian nurture, 
require the intimate spiritual instructions and 
fellowships which the Church alone best fur- 
nishes. Emphasizing all this, it must still be 
rationally admitted, I think, that formal 
enrollment in church membership is not a 
standing or falling condition of vital member- 
ship in the kingdom of Christ. 

Lincoln had some intellectual difficulties 
which made impossible his easy acceptance 
at all points of a credal orthodoxy. But in 
essential quality, his life, in gigantic stature, 
and in the whitest light of publicity, stands in 
history as beautifully Christian. 

To Mr. Henry B. Rankin, intimate friend 
of Mr. Lincoln in earlier years, we are in- 
debted for an invaluable record as falling 



SOURCE AND SCOPE 35 

directly from Mr. Lincoln's own lips. In a 
political campaign in which Peter Cartwright 
was a rival candidate against him for Con- 
gress, Lincoln had been charged with being 
an infidel. To this charge he made no reply 
in his campaign speeches. But to Mr. Ran- 
kin's mother, Lincoln's personal friend, he 
made a private statement of his personal 
faith, conditioning that the statement itself 
should be in no way used in the campaign. 
He said: 

I will not discuss the character and religion of 
Jesus Christ on the stump! That is no place for 
it. At the time you refer to I was having serious 
questionings about some portions of my former 
implicit faith in the Bible. The influences that 
drew me into such doubts were strong ones — men 
having the widest culture and strongest minds of 
any I had known up to that time. In the midst 
of those shadows and questionings, before I could 
see my way clear to decide on them, there came 
into my life sad events and a loss that you were 
close to, and you knew a great deal about how 
hard they were for me, for you were, at that time, 
a mutual friend. Those days of trouble found me 
tossed amidst a sea of questionings. They piled 
big upon me, experiences that brought with them 
great strains upon my emotional and mental life. 
Through all I groped my way until I found a stronger 
and higher grasp of thought, one that reached be- 
yond this life with a clearness and satisfaction I 
had never known before. The Scriptures unfolded 
before me with a deeper and more logical appeal, 
through these new experiences, than anything else 



36 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 

I could find to turn to, or ever before had found 
in them. 

I do not claim that all my doubts were removed 
then, or since that time have been swept away. 
They are not. Probably it is to be my lot to go on 
in a twilight, feeling and reasoning my way through 
life, as questioning, doubting Thomas did. But 
in my poor, maimed, withered way, I bear with 
me as I go on a seeking spirit of desire for a faith 
that was with him of the olden time, who, in his 
need, as I in mine, exclaimed, "Help thou my 
unbelief." 

I doubt the possibility or propriety of settling 
the religion of Jesus Christ in the models of man- 
made creeds and dogmas. It was a spirit in the 
life that he laid stress on and taught, if I read 
aright. I know I see it to be so with me. 

The fundamental truths reported in the four 
Gospels as from the lips of Jesus Christ, and that 
I first heard from the lips of my mother, are settled 
and fixed moral precepts with me. I have con- 
cluded to dismiss from my mind the debatable 
wrangles that once perplexed me with distractions 
that stirred up, but never absolutely settled any- 
thing. I have tossed aside with the doubtful dif- 
ferences which divide denominations — sweeping them 
all out of my mind among the nonessentials. I 
have ceased to follow such discussions or be in- 
terested in them. 

I cannot without mental reservations assent to 
long and complicated creeds and catechisms. If 
the church should ask simply for assent to the 
Saviour's statement of the substance of the law: 
"Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy 
heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, 
and thy neighbor as thyself" — that church would 
I gladly unite with. 



SOURCE AND SCOPE 37 

There are many known instances of indi- 
viduals who have been swayed and molded 
by high religious convictions and motives, 
convictions and motives essentially Christian, 
who nevertheless have not been able to place 
themselves in convincing sympathy with the 
credal conditions of church membership. The 
difficulty may have gone even to the inability 
of accepting the credal interpretations of 
Christ's character and mission, yet with their 
hearts, the instruments through which men 
believe unto righteousness, these same men 
passionately embrace Christ's spirit and motive. 

Instances need not be multiplied. I have 
cited the foregoing cases in illustration of the 
very truth which Christ himself announced, 
namely, that the Kingdom over which he 
presides is something far larger and may be 
something far different than the entire sum 
of ecclesiastical organizations. The citizenship 
of this Kingdom is made up of all who are 
in vital moral harmony with Christ, and in 
the final enrollment these in great numbers 
shall come up from the north and the south, 
from the east and from the west. 

Whatever discriminating safeguards should be 
put around these facts in Christian teaching, 
the facts themselves are entitled to a rational 
and sympathetic hospitality. While, upon the 



38 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 

one hand, it is clearly the duty of evangelical 
thought to sedulously guard itself against 
error, it is, on the other hand, not less its sacred 
obligation to be on guard against putting too 
narrow constructions upon the world-mission 
of the Holy Spirit in dealing with the hearts 
and lives of men. 

However preeminently true it is, and such 
I fully believe to be the fact, that the 
Holy Scriptures contain the highest and com- 
pletest record of God's revelation of himself 
to elect souls, it still remains true that the 
seat of revelation for all ages and races is alone 
in the human breast. In its distinctive quality, 
to say nothing of the special inspiration of 
prophet and apostle, the book that contains 
the photographic record of the life, character 
and teachings of Jesus Christ must and will 
remain, however challenged, the supreme utter- 
ance for the highest religion. Yet, in our 
habitual use of the Bible, it is easy for us to 
overlook the fact that in its every utterance, 
both in the Old and in the New Testaments, 
we realize final validity only as they make 
appeal to, and find approval from, the moral 
and spiritual senses resident within us. The 
moral and spiritual constitution of man is 
fundamental and remains the same from age 
to age. However distinctive the message, or 



SOURCE AND SCOPE 39 

the purpose for which it is given, it remains 
true that God reveals himself to men to-day 
on the same grounds and by the same processes 
as in any past age. To the soul that is seer- 
like, consecrated and worshipful, there comes 
as certainly now the heavenly vision as to 
Moses or to Paul. Really, the divine reveal- 
ing ought now to be more richly, more perfectly 
apprehended by saintly thought than ever 
before. For many centuries the devout mind 
of the Church has been perpetually feeding 
itself upon the spiritual revelations of both 
the Old and the New Testaments. The teach- 
ing of the records has received continuously 
fresh and enlarging interpretation from the 
experience and knowledge of the Christian 
generations. The Church, to whom the Holy 
Spirit is ever showing the things of Christ, 
is now in possession of a fuller and richer 
revelation of Christ's character and mission 
than was ever before apprehended in human 
thought. And this growth in spiritual knowl- 
edge will ever continue through indefinite 
time to come. For Christianity the Bible con- 
tains the major premise which must forever 
remain normative and regulative for the spir- 
itual life. But the inclusions posited in this 
premise are far larger, more various and preg- 
nant in meaning, than have ever yet been 



40 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 

apprehended either by exploring mind or in 
saintly experience. 

The Church of final conquest will make 
all its advances under the inspiration of new 
vision and an ever-enlarging apprehension of 
Christian truth. This Church will require in 
its human leadership the inspired seer, the 
soul with the mystic spiritual vision, the saint 
who experimentally knows both the rapture 
of transfiguration heights and the stress of 
service in the shadowed valleys where demons 
are vexing the lives of men. 



II 

THE SPIRITUAL SENSE 



God is not dumb that he should speak no more; 

If thou hast wanderings in the wilderness 
And findest not Sinai, 'tis thy soul is poor. 

— /. R. Lowell, 

Without thyself, O man, thou hast no means to look for, by 
which thou mayest know God. Thou must abide within 
thyself; to the light that is in thee thou must turn thee; 
there thou wilt find it and nowhere else. God is nearest 
unto thee and to every man. He that goes forth of himself 
to any creature, thereby to know God, departs from God. 
God is nearer unto every man than himself, because he pene- 
trates the most inward and intimate parts of man and is 
the Life of the inmost spirit. Mind, therefore, the Light 
that is in thee. — Peter Balling. 

When we call man a being of spiritual endowments, we 
mean that he is possessor of the powers out of which mo- 
rality and religion have been brought forth, and is open to 
all the possibilities that rationality, morality, and religion 
imply. By possession of his rational nature he has moral 
responsibility and religious powers, and is capable of rising 
to life above sensuous and temporal things, in the fellowship 
of the eternal. — Doctor William Newton Clarke. 

There remains the greatest of all man's higher senses, his 
sense of the spiritual. We cannot, in one way, speak of that 
as a new sense. One would call it the oldest in existence. 
Assuredly what it stands for is the oldest thing in the uni- 
verse. And yet, as related to human life as a whole, it may 
still be regarded as the youngest of the faculties. Man's 
animal nature is old almost as the world. It derives from 
all the million years of our planet's animal story. Compared 
with this, his spiritual quality is indeed a late arrival. It is 
as yet a mere streak on the top of his nature, a babe new- 
born amid the ferocious tribe of his animalities. But the 
babe has all the future before it. That streak of dawn 
means a long and splendid day to come. . . . The religious 
feeling, that baffling mystery to the psychologist; with its 
mystic exaltations, with its attendant phenomena of dreams, 
of vision, of psychic forces; with its stupendous moral driv- 
ing power, with its possibilities of all that is exquisite in 
feeling; with its hints of unimaginable acquisitions yet to 
be realized; the religious feeling, we say, is of all the senses 
of man's inner nature the one that carries in it the richest 
promise. — J. Brierley. 



CHAPTER II 

THE SPIRITUAL SENSE 

Upon the threshold of this chapter I tarry 
briefly to take note of a faculty which may 
be named the "psychic sense." Psychic re- 
search, especially in recent years, has engaged 
much critical study. It must be admitted, I 
think, that, after all deductions are made for 
mistakes of method, or for fraudulent processes, 
this study has yielded a mass of phenomena 
worthy of the most scientific investigation. I 
do not propose here to enter, pro or con, into 
the merits of this subject. The reality, how- 
ever, of a vision of things, ordinarily unseen 
by men, is so well attested from sources both 
numerous and commanding as to make skep- 
ticism of the phenomena unreasonable. As 
competent witnesses to the reality of such 
phenomena, we might cite the names of James 
Russell Lowell, William Stead, and Sir Oliver 
Lodge. These are a few from great numbers, 
who give direct, and seemingly reliable, testi- 
mony of experiences with "presences" which 
belong to the realm of mystery. There is 
also a large literature relating to experiences 
designated under the general name of "trance" 

43 



44 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 

— a state in which the soul seems to have 
passed out of the body or to be rapt in vision. 
In the book of Acts it is said of Saint Peter 
that once "he fell into a trance, and saw heaven 
opened." Was this experience akin to that 
of Saint Paul, who in a vision was caught up 
to the third heaven, himself not knowing 
whether he was in or out of the body? For 
the trance experience a multitude of witnesses 
could be named, among whom are Charles 
Kingsley, Alfred Tennyson, and J. A. Symonds. 
There is also a strange borderland of impres- 
sions which is frequently entered under con- 
ditions of anaesthesia. In this state voluntary 
movements are suspended, and the vital func- 
tions reduced to the lowest action. In passing 
into this state the mystical consciousness is 
stimulated in an extraordinary degree. "Depth 
beyond depth of truth seems revealed" to the 
subject. William James, a foremost student 
in this field of phenomena, writes: 

Some years ago I myself made some observations 
on this aspect of nitrous oxide intoxication, and 
reported them in print. One conclusion was forced 
upon my mind at that time, and my impression 
of its truth has ever since remained unshaken. 
It is that our normal waking consciousness, rational 
consciousness as we call it, is but one special type 
of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it 
by the filmiest of screens, there lie potential forms 
of consciousness entirely different. We may go 



THE SPIRITUAL SENSE 45 

through life without suspecting their existence; but 
apply the requisite stimulus, and at a touch they 
are there in all their completeness, definite types 
of mentality which probably somewhere have their 
field of application and adaptation. No account 
of the universe in its totality can be final which 
leaves these other forms of consciousness quite 
disregarded. 

I am induced to mention these various 
phenomena because they seem to indicate a 
multiform susceptibility, potentiality, of the 
soul for psychical experiences from which the 
ordinary, perhaps the normal, life of men seems 
excluded. These susceptibilities, however they 
may be finally classified, or validated, would 
seem to indicate that the human soul, if it 
could only make connections, might become a 
free citizen and explorer of perhaps innumer- 
able realms which now lie mostly beyond the 
range of observation. They suggest at least 
that the soul is a marvelous entity, a some- 
thing of illimitable possibilities, a something 
which may very well be akin to divinity. 

For the purposes of this writing I do not 
at all identify what I have termed the "psychic 
sense," whatever it may be, with the "spiritual 
sense." The latter is a racial possession, a 
something certain of manifestation in all high 
religious experience. 

Unfortunately, it has not been, until very 



46 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 

recently, common to philosophy to accord 
much place or validity to the religious sense. 
This sense has been much treated as though 
it were the offspring of outgrown superstitions. 
By some schools of philosophy it has been 
contemptuously dismissed as though it were 
the creation of a priestcraft, a kind of voca- 
tion invented for the purpose of furnishing a 
livelihood for a school of men skilled in jug- 
gling with human hopes and fears. The serious 
advocates of such thought have simply, if at 
all, put themselves into history as purblind 
observers of the universe. Their thought- 
product is in no worthy sense to be even men- 
tioned as philosophy. 

The phenomena of religion have increasingly 
forced recognition for themselves. No philos- 
ophy worthy of the name is now indifferent to 
their claims. Our modern libraries abound in 
works devoted to the psychology of religion. 
William James, Borden P. Bowne, Edwin D. 
Starbuck, George A. Coe, Edward P. Ames, 
William E. Hocking — all American writers — 
are a few among many who have furnished 
illuminating studies in this vital field. 

The modern psychologists, quite generally, 
enter their protests against the method of the 
old philosophy which mapped out the human 
mind into "Intellect, Sensibilities, and Will," 



THE SPIRITUAL SENSE 47 

each a water-tight compartment susceptible 
of being independently examined by itself. 
The normal mental life, however various and 
complex its functioning powers, is one. Man 
exercises the same faculties in his religious 
thought and activities as in his vocational 
pursuits. His religiousness means that he gives 
a special direction, emphasis, and application 
to religion of the same mental totality which 
he gives to other objects which may engross 
his energies. The quality of the object pur- 
sued is the decisive thing. If one's mentality 
is absorbed in selfish greeds or in low ambi- 
tions, his very character itself will take on the 
qualities which he pursues. As a man thinketh 
in his heart, so is he. Fortunately, the qual- 
ities of motives are so well understood that 
none need mistake as to the effect of an en- 
grossing affection on character. 

So far as the spiritual sense is concerned, it 
would seem to matter little what philosophy 
may decide as to its genesis. All agree that 
this sense is potential in universal human nature. 
It is equally agreed that of all motives which 
transform and uplift character none is so 
morally dynamic as the motives of a high 
religious faith. A psychology which could 
trace the genesis and evolution of the spiritual 
sense would not thereby detract in the slight- 



48 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 

est from its moral significance for human life. 
The spiritual sense is to be philosophically 
reckoned with. It is primal in human nature. 
The magnetic needle points not more certainly 
to the pole than does this sense to a divine 
source. Without its activity man can have 
knowledge neither of God nor of a spiritual 
universe. Sadly, the vision of this sense may 
be greatly obscured. Its accompanying con- 
ception of the character of God may be very 
unworthy. But if the soul is to have any 
inspiration, any revelation, in spiritual things, 
these can come to consciousness only at the 
seat of the spiritual sense. The spiritual sense, 
as, indeed, the faculty of conscience, is sub- 
ject to education. It is the function of Chris- 
tian teaching, from whatever source, to carry 
light and truth to the spiritual understanding. 
"The entrance of thy words giveth light." 
"If therefore thine eye be single, thy whole 
body shall be full of light." But the spiritual 
sense is the eye of the soul. It is the cleansed 
vision of this sense that enables the pure in 
heart to see God. 

Science asserts that the laws of nature are 
absolutely reliable. Eucken has repeatedly 
stated that if reason does not reside in the 
whole structure of the universe, it cannot be 
found in any single spot. The order of the 



THE SPIRITUAL SENSE 49 

world about us is not a lie. We live in a sys- 
tem where aptitudes are met by correspond- 
ences. If for the eye there is light, if for the 
reason truth, then man is simply mocked if 
for the spiritual sense there is no responding 
God. It would be egregiously absurd to de- 
clare that we live in a system which makes 
infallible response to our physical senses, to 
our appetites, to our reason, and yet totally 
refuses response to our conscious moral and 
spiritual needs. This would be a proclamation 
of incapacity against the universe. It would 
be to destroy by one stroke the foundations 
of both philosophy and science. If we live in 
an honest universe, we may implicitly rely 
upon an ample correspondence to man's high- 
est and most imperative needs — the needs of 
his spiritual nature. The moral law, which 
was to the great philosopher Kant a standing 
wonder, is not a cheat. Man's moral constitu- 
tion is not a lie. The only answer to the 
infinite in man, to the irrepressible and undy- 
ing hunger of his soul is — God. 

The subject considered is one of great grav- 
ity. It should be approached in a spirit of 
the utmost open-mindedness, candor, and rev- 
erence. It is due to say that recent psychology 
has effected marked revisions in the traditional 
views of both inspiration and revelation. The 



50 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 

prevalent, or popular, view of these subjects 
has been that God's touch upon man's spiritual 
life is by some outward, miraculous, or phenom- 
enal manifestation, rather than by a process 
purely of inward illumination. I do not forget 
the outward historic processes by which God 
has furnished object-lessons of himself and of his 
purposes, that thereby men might be schooled in 
the methods of Providence. Of this method of 
divine education I shall speak elsewhere. 

The fact now to be emphasized is that God's 
spiritual revelations of himself, the inspirations 
through which the clearest vision of himself 
is secured, are those which have their seat and 
operation solely within the human breast. As 
the ear can have no hearing save by the en- 
trance of sound, the eye no vision save by 
the entrance of light, so the spiritual sense 
can have no perception of God save as it is 
itself touched by divine illumination. This is 
only to say that the spiritual organ in man is 
inoperative, without function, save as evoked 
in response to spiritual stimuli. But, if the 
spiritual sense is the organ through which God 
finds entrance into, and expression of himself 
within, the soul, it is clear that the soul itself 
is a sacred temple into which God enters, 
that he may give inspirations and revelations 
from himself. 



THE SPIRITUAL SENSE 51 

The fact of divine processes in history, the 
fact of the inspired records in the Sacred 
Scriptures, the supreme fact itself of Jesus 
Christ as portrayed in the New Testament — 
these apparently outward facts in no way 
invalidate the human soul as the one seat of 
divine inspiration. The record of revelation, 
voicing itself either in history or in the Scrip- 
tures, can secure no appeal, receive no re- 
sponse, until it finally utters itself in the 
inner courts of the soul. It was a saying of 
George Fox that "Though I read of Christ 
and God, I know them only from a like spirit 
in my own soul." Not even God can make a 
single spiritual revelation of himself save as 
within man there is an awakened and illu- 
minated spiritual response. The man with a 
dormant spiritual sense is one who would stand 
mute, dumb, and unseeing in the face of a 
flaming Sinai or a pleading Calvary of divine 
manifestation. 

It hardly needs restatement that the spir- 
itual sense is God's one door of approach to 
the universal heart. The scientific unity of 
the world nowhere more certainly holds than 
in the universally homogeneous character of 
man's moral and spiritual constitution. God 
deals spiritually with all men. A measure of the 
Spirit is given to every man to profit withal. 



52 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 

It does not follow that all peoples, certainly 
not at the same periods of history, should be 
possessed of equally clear spiritual insight. 
Even members of the same family, reared in 
a common environment, often show great dis- 
similarity in acuteness of perception. This 
does not prove that fundamentally they have 
dissimilar constitutions or faculties. So, how- 
ever much nations and races may differ in 
grasp upon certain conceptions, this is no 
proof of fundamental dissimilarity in the phys- 
ical, mental, and moral constitution of the 
race as a whole. As to alertness of spiritual 
apprehension, much may depend upon both 
racial heredity and environment. Renan, in 
an eloquent passage, extols the spiritual genius 
of the ancient Hebrews. In his philosophy 
he seeks to account for this genius on the 
ground of national habit and environment. 
The great seers of ancient Israel, living in the 
white sunlight and under the starry skies of 
Syria, whatever the deeper causes, proved 
themselves exceptionally responsive to the 
Divine Presence. They, as no other ancient 
characters, evidenced both susceptibility and 
hospitality to the loftiest moral inspirations. 

We must hesitate, however, to conclude that 
Israel was the only ancient people with whom 
God was distinctively dealing. If God exer- 



THE SPIRITUAL SENSE 53 

cises any providence over the world, we do 
well to inquire as to the scope of the prov- 
idential purpose. All of God's dealings in 
history look toward the finality of a perfected 
humanity. The kingdom of God in the earth, 
both in the making and its completed form, 
will involve many other factors than those 
which we are accustomed to classify as dis- 
tinctively spiritual. God's perfected world 
will be characterized by law, art, intellectual 
enlightenment, universal education, social and 
industrial justice, human brotherhood, and by 
all conditions which must contribute to the 
weal and purity of society. A final and perfect 
civilization was from the beginning in God's 
diagram. For the fulfillment of this program, 
God seems to have assigned a division of 
labor among the nations. Let the Hebrew seer 
remain unchallenged as the supreme moral 
teacher of his times. It will still remain true 
that he was very far from contributing all 
the elements requisite to God's ideal of civil- 
ization. Indeed, in many of the highest things 
the Hebrew was a laggard. In philosophy 
and art he holds no rank with his Grecian 
contemporaries. In the art of government and 
in the creation of civil codes he is utterly over- 
shadowed by the Roman. The Jews have been 
scattered throughout civilization, yet their con- 



54 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 

tribution to world-statesmanship among the 
nations has been well-nigh a negligible quantity. 
They have a superficial reputation of being 
great financiers, but the fact is that a dozen 
American financiers could be named who have 
amassed sufficient wealth to buy out the en- 
tire Jewish world. In music, while the Hebrew 
has given to the worshiping world a first 
song litany, yet in the production of great 
oratorios and symphonies, the classical master- 
pieces of music, the Hebrew is nowhere to be 
mentioned in comparison with the great Italian, 
German, and even English, composers. In 
inventive arts, the arts that have multiplied 
human productivity a thousand fold, the Jew 
figures very little. 

Yet, we must not be guilty of the imper- 
tinence or the pedantry of minifying the place 
of the Hebrew in the great complex of civiliza- 
tion. On his brow we may reverently and 
justly place the crown of moral leadership for 
mankind. Even though small among the 
tribes of earth, he has made contributions to 
the world's spiritual uplifting greater than the 
mightiest. He holds, and will forever hold, 
unrivaled and secure place as the prophet and 
proclaimer of the highest inspirations and 
hopes for humanity. The writings which were 
born in his inspired soul will remain to the end, 



THE SPIRITUAL SENSE 55 

and superlatively, matchless religious classics 
for mankind. The contributions to civiliza- 
tion of great moral personalities as made by 
the Hebrew race stand unapproachable by the 
representatives of all other peoples. The 
Hebrews gave to the world Moses, Elijah, 
Isaiah, John the Baptist, Jesus, and Paul. 
If the Hebrew race were now to become ex- 
tinct, mankind, with the brightest forecasts 
which we may make for its future, will never 
reach a point of development at which it will 
not be compelled to look back to Hebrew 
history for its finest moral ideals, and for its 
matchless spiritual teachers. 

The Hebrew compels the moral historian 
to stand among the Judsean hills, and thence 
to cast his measuring lines for the spiritual 
significance of history. The Hebrew stands 
in the moral center of the divine drama of 
the world. Nevertheless, we must not dis- 
credit our own judgment, nor needlessly im- 
poverish our own vision, by assuming that he 
alone has been the object or the instrument 
of God's providential dealings with the world. 
All the races and sons of men are in God's 
providential vision. In seeking any assessment 
of the divine dealings with the human race 
we must put ourselves on guard against any 
attempt to confine the entire meaning of 



56 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 

providence in some pocket of a narrow creed. 
In reaching, even proximately, an adequate 
point for measuring the scope of God's grace, 
we must, if needs be, familiarize ourselves with 
the conception that God is, and always has 
been, working for a world-humanity. The 
spiritual sense, common to the race, is the 
universal ground of appeal both for God and 
his messengers. The message of the preacher 
is effective only as he awakens this responsive 
sense. This same spiritual sense, universal in 
the heathen world, is the one door of entrance 
and of hope for all missionary effort. The 
Holy Spirit himself waits with his illuminating 
presence at this very door for admission to 
every human life. 

Historically, we know only too sadly how 
crude, how beclouded, how seemingly hope- 
less has been the response of the great masses 
of mankind to God's higher thought and pur- 
pose. Like a luminous mountain, with ever- 
enriching revelations as it is ascended, God's 
redemptive purpose has been set up in the 
midst of men. And yet how few, even of 
saintly minds, have climbed to the most in- 
spiring heights ! But God is neither discouraged 
nor balked in his purposes. The infantile 
moral helplessness and ignorance of the race 
is no surprise to him. It is in the presence of 



THE SPIRITUAL SENSE 57 

such beginnings that he ordains all the prophetic 
processes which are to ultimate in the final 
splendors and triumphs of his kingdom among 
men. It is needless to advocate any special 
theory of evolution. The perfected theory of 
evolution has not yet been written. But we 
must not quarrel with history. A sure lesson 
of history is that God is dealing intellectually 
and morally with the race by evolutionary 
processes. This is asserted by all the records 
of human advancement. All knowledge is 
gained by the exercise of faculties which 
initially are undeveloped and unknowing. But 
how slow has been the march of knowledge! 
For immemorial ages the earth has remained 
an unexplored storehouse of laws and materials 
dynamic for human uses. Such arts, sciences, 
philosophies, and inventions as have thus far 
come into service have been secured only at the 
price of infinite and buffeting toils of mind. 
The fact, however, of most astounding signi- 
ficance is that the light of knowledge so far 
gained only serves to indicate infinities of fact 
yet to be explored. 

Now, if such is God's method in dealing with 
man's intellectual and inventive attainments, 
as relating to his material and temporal life on 
the earth, why should we look for a prompter 
process in the attainment of that knowledge 



58 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 

and experience which pertain to the higher 
spiritual life? It is an obvious historical fact 
that the progress of the race in spiritual knowl- 
edge and character has at best lingered on slow, 
difficult, and toilsome pathways. Even now, 
in large areas, as measured by human im- 
pression, the promise of man's spiritual trans- 
formation and final exaltation seems little 
better than a hopeless dream. It would indeed 
be such if we had to reckon without God. 
But he from behind what is to us "the dim 
unknown" is "keeping watch above his 0™." 
He is infallibly engineering the world to what 
may be the far-off but sure event of his per- 
fected kingdom. It cannot be that the great 
prophets and poet-seers of the ages are mis- 
taken in their vision. Browning, without illu- 
sion, saw the dark and forbidding things of life. 
He had faced the specter of doubt. But never 
once was his faith eclipsed, nor his courage 
daunted. He felt sublimely confident of his 
own future. He said: 

If I stoop 
Into a dark tremendous sea of cloud, 
It is but for a time; I press God's lamp 
Close to my breast; its splendor, soon or late, 
Will pierce the gloom! I shall emerge one day. 

It was Browning who put his own prophecy 



THE SPIRITUAL SENSE 59 

of man's perfected future into the lips of a 
medieval mystic: 

For these things tend still upward, progress is 

The law of life, man is not man as yet. 

Nor shall I deem his object served, his end 

Attained, his genuine strength put fairly forth, 

While only here and there a star dispels 

The darkness, here and there a towering mind 

O'erlooks its prostrate fellows; when the host 

Is out at once to the despair of night, 

When all mankind alike is perfected, 

Equal in full-blown powers — then, not till then, 

I say, begins man's general infancy. 

... So in man's self arise 

August anticipations, symbols, types 

Of a dim splendor ever on before 

In that eternal circle life pursues. 

For men begin to pass their nature's bound, 

And find new hopes and cares which fast supplant 

Their proper joys and griefs; they grow too great 

For narrow creeds of right and wrong, which fade 

Before the unmeasured thirst for good; while peace 

Rises within them ever more and more. 

Such men are even now upon the earth, 

Serene amid the half -formed creatures round 

Who should be saved by them and joined with them. 

The great laureate voices his faith, a most 
optimistic and prophetic faith, in man's per- 
fected future in many a glowing verse. He had 
the vision at least of God's infinite patience, of 
his unthwartable purpose to bring man, even 
though it should require aeonian ages, to final 
perfection. 



60 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 

Dawn not Day! 
Is it shame, so few should have climbed from the 
dens in the level below, 
Men, with a heart and a soul, no slaves of a 

four-footed will? 
But if twenty million of summers are stored in 
the sunlight still, 
We are far from the noon of man, there is time 
for the race to grow. 

Red of the dawn! 
Is it turning a fainter red? so be it, but when shall 
we lay 
The Ghost of the Brute that is walking and 

haunting us yet, and be free? 
In a hundred, a thousand winters? Ah, what 
will our children be, 
The men of a hundred thousand, a million sum- 
mers away? 

Again : 

Where is one that, born of woman, altogether can 

escape 
From the lower world within him, moods of tiger, 

or of ape? 
Man as yet is being made, and ere the crowning 

Age of ages, 
Shall not aeon after seon pass and touch him into 

shape? 

All about him shadow still, but, while the races 

flower and fade, 
Prophet-eyes may catch a glory slowly gaining on 

the shade, 
Till the peoples all are one, and all their voices 

blend in choric 
Hallelujah to the Maker: "It is finished. Man is 

made," 



THE SPIRITUAL SENSE 61 

The question will be raised, "What can be 
the relation of such a philosophy to the incar- 
nation? 3 ' If Christ was the eternal Logos in- 
carnate, if the Christ of Syria was really God 
manifest in the flesh, then for his working and 
effective ministry in the world there is no need 
to set historic limits. Himself said, "Before 
Abraham was, I am," Christ's mission with 
human destiny is eternally operative. He 
alone, as the Lamb slain from before the foun- 
dations of the world, always has been and 
always will be the Divine Redeemer of men. 
Christ has been present in the world with all 
races and in all ages to meet the spiritual needs 
of men. This doctrine was taught by Origen, 
Augustine, and Luther, and by innumerable 
others. Canon James Maurice Wilson has 
stated it as follows: "Christ's redeeming work 
did not begin when he was born in Bethlehem: 
it had begun as the Word of conscience, the 
Word Very nigh' to man, in all ages. That 
which is universal in man was manifested, con- 
centrated, in the historic revelation of Christ. 
In him the universal subjective became the 
unique objective revelation. But in all time he 
was the Light which lighteth every man." In a 
sense divinely true, though not nominally his- 
toric, Christ has always been, and always will be, 
a redeeming and saving Presence in the world. 



62 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 

The greatness of Jesus Christ passes by in- 
finite measurements human comprehension. 
Saint Paul was sanely right when he declared 
that "by him were all things created, that are 
in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and 
invisible, whether they be thrones, or domin- 
ions, or principalities, or powers: all things 
were created by him and for him." Christ's 
mission is both cosmic and seonian. He is 
working the worlds and the ages to a divine 
program. The exaltation of man is eternally 
central to his purpose. He will neither weary 
nor suffer defeat. Eternity is his theater, 
and the inexhaustible resources of the moral 
universe are at his command. It matters not 
that sin, ignorance, superstition, and all the 
brood of moral ills which these beget, entrench 
themselves against him. Against sin he will 
oppose God's holiness; against ignorance, divine 
enlightenment; against superstition, scientific 
knowledge; against all moral ills, the salvation 
of God. Unfalteringly he will widen his conquest 
until all knees of things in heaven and of things 
in earth shall bow to his sovereignty, and he 
shall be universally acclaimed as King of kings 
and Lord of lords. 



Ill 

THE HOLY SPIRIT 



Spirit, who makest all things new, 
Thou leadest onward: we pursue 

The heavenly march sublime. 
'Neath thy renewing fire we glow, 
And still from strength to strength we go, 

From height to height we climb. 

To thee we rise, in thee we rest; 
We stay at home, we go in quest, 

Still thou art our abode. 
The rapture swells, the wonder grows, 
As full on us new life still flows 

From our unchanging God. 

The whole of human nature must be included in its various 
relations to that Divine Being who is not mere Intelligence, 
mere Power, mere Beneficence, but the Highest Life of all, 
the only real and complete Personality in the universe. He 
possesses a personal life in its unimaginable perfection and 
has intrusted his high gift in a measure to some of his crea- 
tures, that they may continually press forward toward its 
fuller realization. The Divine Spirit is at the same time 
God over all human spirits, around them and within them — 
each word to be maintained with equal weight and strenu- 
ousness. To apprehend, maintain, enjoy, and extend that 
many-sided relation constitutes the true life of the finite 
spirit through all its history. — Dr. W. T. Davison. 

We are discovering now that God is not only the source 
and object of the religious feelings, but that he also is a 
musician, an artist, a mathematician, the Creator and giver 
of all beauty, and that in seeking perfection in these direc- 
tions we are seeking him. It is a false conscience which 
would shut up our religious interests to the narrow ground 
of a few elementary ideas. This is to put them in charge of 
a kitchen garden when their true role is to govern a universe. 
— J. Brierley. 



CHAPTER III 
THE HOLY SPIRIT 

"Christianity is a religion of the spirit; 
that is to say, it finds its new world in a super- 
sensible, invisible kingdom. It believes in a 
purely spiritual God as the Source and Sus- 
tainer of all reality, so that the renewal of life 
which it demands is preeminently spiritual in 
kind. Nature, as the creation of God, revealing 
his splendor through all her works and ways, 
and praising him with a thousand tongues, has 
to subserve the aims of spirit." 

This statement, by one who is perhaps the 
world's greatest living philosopher, must be 
accepted, so far as it goes, as truly representing 
the Christian view. The Holy Spirit, in Chris- 
tian thought, is God, God everywhere working 
in his world. The ideal Christian life is the 
largest, divinest, and most perfect life possible 
to man. But of this life the Holy Spirit is 
the Begetter, the Sustainer, the Inspiration 
and the Guide. The Christian bears the name 
of Christ; he is Christ's disciple, a citizen of 
Christ's kingdom. He is ruled by Christ's 

65 



66 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 

spirit. His chief aim is to be Christlike and to 
do Christ's will. The mission of Jesus Christ 
and of the Holy Spirit are one. The mission 
of the Holy Spirit is, in all divine resourceful- 
ness, to 'serve the kingdom of Christ. In 
general uses the names of Christ and of the 
Holy Spirit are interchangeable terms. Dis- 
missing all technic of theological definition, the 
Holy Spirit is the ever-living, immanent, and 
omniscient Christ, the Christ who controls all 
moral forces in the interests of his kingdom. 

Always, in treating of divine character, we 
need to guard ourselves against narrow con- 
ceptions. Common Christian thought ascribes 
to the Spirit the offices of Convincer of sin, 
Pardoner of the penitent, Regenerator and 
Sanctifier of the believer, Bestower of grace, 
Inspirer, Sustainer, and Comforter of the 
Christian in burden-bearing service and in all 
of life's turbulent experiences, and, at the last, 
a Divine Presence dissipating for him the 
shadows of death with the radiance of immor- 
tal hope. This diagram, if it were all, would 
be worthy of God. It is a diagram which 
only a Supreme Divinity could fill. But all 
this, with its unmeasured import, represents 
but a fraction, however great, of the Spirit's 
mission to the world's life. 

The mission of the Holy Spirit relates itself 



THE HOLY SPIRIT 6? 

creatively and vitally to man's entire being. 
The thought of the historic Church, to an 
overshadowing degree, has been occupied with 
the relations of the individual soul to God. 
The Church has laid not too much, but too 
exclusive, emphasis upon the value of salvation 
for the individual. Salvation for the individual 
from the "wrath to come" has been hitherto 
largely central in the teaching and efforts of 
the Church. This particular emphasis should 
never be withheld. But it has never been a 
chief teaching of New Testament Christianity 
that its exclusive mission is to save the indi= 
vidual soul. 

Man is made preeminently for two relation- 
ships: the one with God, his Maker; the other 
with man, his fellow. The Holy Spirit has a 
vital relation to every part which man sustains 
in these imperative connections. Man is God's 
counterpart, endowed with the potentialities of 
intellect, of insight, of affection, of will, of con- 
science. He is made a worshipful being, po- 
tentially capable of unlimited moral and spirit- 
ual apprehension. Upon him there is laid ab- 
solute divine demand for response from his 
every faculty. His relations are both individual 
and social. His highest life must realize itself 
in both self -development and service. The 
Holy Spirit sweeps the entire scale of the human 



68 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 

soul. Man is like a musical instrument, with 
infinite possibilities of expression; but perfection 
of expression is realized only when in all his 
faculties he responds to the Master's touch. 
In the measure only of this response can a man 
come perfectly into the experience of the 
Christian life. 

What shall we say about the intellect as 
related to the Christian life? God is the great 
Thinker. Among the marvels of creation is 
the intellectual endowment of man. He has 
capacity for thinking his way into the measure- 
ments of God's own thought. The very en- 
dowment of the intellectual faculty is full 
proof that God himself is both honored and 
served by the normal uses of the human mind. 
In stressing man's duty to love God with all 
his heart it seems sometimes to be overlooked 
that God requires absolute consecration of 
"Mind and Soul," as well as of heart. Many 
most vital questions can secure final decision 
only in the court of intellect. Intellect is the 
inquisitor and discoverer in fields of scientific 
and philosophical truth. Man himself, how- 
ever infinite in faculty, however baffling the 
unexplored mysteries which still may remain 
within him, comes to his best self-understand- 
ing only in the light of those microscopic and 
mental processes by which he ever seeks self- 



THE HOLY SPIRIT 69 

explanation. Let it be admitted that intellect 
does not yield all the criteria of truth, and that 
there are many mysteries which philosophy fails 
to explain; yet, eliminate the intellectual 
faculties, and human life, so far as we can see, 
would be reduced to a meaningless medley. 

Man, as artist or critic, is made to reflect the 
divine mind. It is a teaching of the Hebrew 
Scriptures that God inspires the artificer for 
cunning workmanship. Is it unreasonable to 
assume that the Divine Spirit unveils the 
beauties of nature to the vision of the artist, 
that he touches the soul of the composer to 
finest harmonies, or that he inspires the imagina- 
tion of the poet for creative work? Who shall 
tell us that these values are born without a 
divine parentage! The artist truly responds 
to the Spirit's call when he consecrates his 
talent to noble uses. 

God made the mind for critical investigation. 
In the exercise of this function it has gathered 
and stored for human uses, culture, and power, 
all the world's wealth of knowledge, science, 
art, history, philosophy. God has isolated no 
department of his own work from the search 
of man the thinker and critic. It would seem 
by some to be judged a presumption and sin 
that man should assume critically to investigate 
claims long associated with religious thought — 



70 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 

claims which may be held as of sacred purport. 
Not a few seem to think that the Hebrew and 
Christian Scriptures are of a character so 
sacred as to make it a presumption and sin that 
any attempt should be made to subject them 
to critical study. To subject their origins, 
their environments, their historical, literary, 
and grammatical structures to critical investi- 
gation would constitute in itself a sacrilege. 

God has not seemed to regard any other works 
of his creation in this way. He has peopled the 
far spaces with innumerable worlds. But, so 
far as yet discovered, a very chief service of 
these worlds is that they have served to mag- 
nify, to glorify, the mind of man. However 
far off and unapproachably sacred to the thought 
of some other generations these worlds may 
have seemed, the modern man has demonstrated 
a capacity for annihilating their distances, 
measuring their orbs, analyzing their substances; 
and in doing this he has given indubitable 
proof of his kingship in the universe. He has 
given demonstration that a single human mind 
capable of building its track of thought through 
the void may justly be accounted as of greater 
worth in the sight of God than all the dumb 
worlds in space. God has never chided man 
for the attempt critically to study the structure 
of the material universe. 



THE HOLY SPIRIT 71 

An inspired apostle has designated the human 
body as the very "temple of the Holy Ghost." 
It ought not to require much imagination to feel 
the sacredness of the human body. It is a 
vital mechanism worthy of a divine creation. 
It surely is something not to be profaned. But 
profanation of the body is its physical abuse, 
the failure to observe the sacred laws of health, 
its prostitution to lust, to drunkenness, to 
gluttony. The body, however divine its func- 
tion as the temple of the Holy Ghost, is never 
profaned by a reverent study of its mechanism. 
The scientific knowledge of the human body 
has discovered and illuminated the vital con- 
ditions of health, has prepared the foundations 
for all the beneficent ministries of enlightened 
medicine and surgery. The critical mastery of 
its physiology has yielded immeasurable values 
to human life. 

Not unakin to the protest which has been 
raised against a critical study of things regarded 
as sacred in nature is the religious protest 
entered against a critical study of the Sacred 
Scriptures. The true function of criticism is 
to ascertain intrinsic truth, truth fundamental 
and vital in the situation. It is difficult to see 
how such a process can work harm in any realm. 
In so far as criticism is corrective, revisionary, 
it may necessitate the abandonment of old, and 



72 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 

the acceptance of new, views. This doubtless, 
in some cases, will result in mental disturbance 
and dislodgment to those who have been 
grounded in traditional interpretations. Such 
is a price always to be paid for the world's en- 
larging knowledge. Mental dislodgments, how- 
ever, are not the worst things to happen in the 
world of thought. Christ himself was a great 
disturber of the traditions of his time. Mental 
dislodgment was a common symptom manifest 
under the influence of his teaching. He did 
not hesitate to take entire responsibility for the 
consequences. 

When a morbid condition inheres in the 
physical system, it is eminently desirable that 
its causes should be removed, however drastic 
the process required. In the matter of intel- 
lectual health it may happen that mental 
morbidity is the result of a mind overloaded 
with devitalized, unassimilable traditionalism. 
This condition may, in instances, be so far 
advanced as to be incurable, hopeless. In any 
event, it cannot be helped by any process of 
mental quackery. Some, unfortunately, will 
suffer mentally from a failure ever to come in 
contact with helpfully corrective sources. In 
the meantime it would be helpful if all men 
could be reminded that the history, the liter- 
ature, and the grammar of all the books of the 



THE HOLY SPIRIT 73 

Bible, when most perfectly ascertained, are not 
synonymous with, and are never to be substi- 
tuted for, a saving personal faith in Jesus Christ. 
Personal religion is one thing; biblical criticism 
quite another. 

There can be no doubt that the entire Church, 
especially its Protestant section, is awaking 
to the high values accruing to Christian thought 
from a reverent and competent criticism of the 
Bible. This process has already saved the 
Bible to much of the world's best intellect. 
The time is not far away when the secured 
results of a reverent criticism will be happily 
domesticated in the common Christian thought, 
and when all will rejoice in a vast securement, 
correction, and enrichment of Scripture knowl- 
edge such as only a reverent and enlightened 
criticism can yield. In the meantime the pro- 
test, and sometimes the vehement denuncia- 
tion, indulged by good people against the ap- 
plication of critical study to the Bible, doubt- 
less arises from lack of appreciation of the 
normal and legitimate critical function with 
which God himself has endowed the human 
mind. There still lurks widely in popular 
thought an old-time and essentially disreputable 
suspicion that in some way intellectual culture 
is a foe to spirituality. Erasmus, a foremost 
scholar of his day, indulged in the bitter gibe 



74 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 

that "Our theologians call it a sign of holiness 
to be unable to read." The Nonconformist 
minister of whom Brierley tells us, who had 
never allowed himself to study German because 
"German religious thought was so unsettling," 
stands, it is to be feared, as a type of a mental 
survival which unfortunately is far from extinct 
in our day. It seems an ironical anomaly of 
the times that, while in all the professions and 
standard industries there is a constant looking 
for new knowledge and new appliances of in- 
vention, in a considerable section of theological 
thought ignorance is still at a premium. Of 
course this state of thought would naturally 
linger with that type of mind which contents 
itself with the belief that all spiritual truth 
has been delivered once for all. The assump- 
tion of a final, complete, and stereotyped 
revelation, however irrational in itself, would 
suggest the possibilities of mental restfulness, 
and might prove itself well adapted to the 
mentally indolent. The assumption is against 
history, against experience. It is false. The 
Christian mind, under the inspiration and 
illumination of the Divine Spirit, is an ordained 
path-finder into ever new fields of experience 
and truth. The Holy Spirit quickens mental 
insight just as certainly as he works in any 
other faculty of the human soul. 



THE HOLY SPIRIT 75 

But man is far more and other than a being 
simply of heart, of conscience, of will, or of 
intellect. He is preeminently a social being. 
He stands related to a world of his fellows. The 
real significance of his life grows out of his social 
relations. Society is the school in which his 
individuality comes to expression, in which his 
powers find development, the school which 
brings to him self-discipline and training for 
service. Were it conceivable that by any means 
a child could grow from infancy to full physical 
stature without social environment, such a 
person could represent only the most rudi- 
mentary development of character. It is the 
reaction of other lives upon the child, in the 
home, in school, in society, through which 
alone his powers come to the full. And here 
we have presented to us the great world-school 
of man's religious obligation, of his spiritual 
opportunity. As society puts its building and 
shaping hand upon the individual, so in turn 
the individual puts his own creative touch upon 
the lives that are about him. 

The dynamic logic of this situation has 
forced the Church to enlarge its conception of 
the function of Christianity in the earth. The 
individualistic conception of salvation for the 
life to come can no longer monopolize Christian 
thought. Christ's own idea, that upon which 



76 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 

he laid so continuous emphasis in the announce- 
ments of his kingdom, namely, that of the moral 
renewal and reconstruction of human society 
in this present world, is now, though late, 
claiming its rightful place in Christian convic- 
tions. Viewed in historic retrospect, it is 
astonishing how modern is this apprehension 
in Christian thought. Through modern eyes 
alone have we come to see that the whole large- 
ness of this conception was clearly anticipated 
in the thought of Jesus. Most of the Christian 
centuries have passed with all too little practical 
embodiment of God's world-plan in the working 
diagram of the Church. The vision of Chris- 
tianity to-day, as never before, is one of world- 
outlook. The heart of Christianity throbs 
with universal sympathy. This temper is 
Christian, but as a living force in civilization 
it is newborn. 

By the dominant statecrafts and theologies 
of the past this temper was little felt. To 
most classic ancient thought the outsider was 
regarded as an enemy whom it was right to 
destroy. The spirit of tribal animosities has had 
long survival in the historic creeds. For the 
larger part of the Christian centuries a majority 
of the Church has believed that even God has 
reprobated vast numbers of the human race. 
Catholics and Protestants have glared at each 



THE HOLY SPIRIT 77 

other in the spirit of mutual hate. Even the 
Protestant denominations, dwelling in the same 
communities, have been so dogmatic and nar- 
row as each to concede little to the Christian 
status of the other. 

As opposed to all this, a great change has 
come in these very modern days. A vital and 
balmy springtime is advancing upon the world 
of Christian thought. The full, strong note 
of a growing harmony is borne upon the spiritual 
atmospheres of the times. Christian thought, 
with clear vision and unmistakable emphasis, 
is coming to view the whole human race as the 
field of God's redemptive work. Humanity is 
a solidarity, one brotherhood. The race as a 
whole can reach its highest levels only as all its 
peoples and tribes are lifted to the enlighten- 
ments and fellowships of brotherhood in Jesus 
Christ. It is this vision that furnishes inspira- 
tion for all the phenomenal and prophetic move- 
ments of modern missions. This vision is rap- 
idly creating in all the Church a new sense of 
the value of Christian unity and of cooperation 
in the work of Christ's universal Kingdom. The 
broadest-minded Christians of the day are en- 
thusiastic volunteers in the army of the new 
unities. To the keenest spiritual sense of the 
times a narrow, and divisive sectarianism is be- 
coming a thing of increasing abhorrence. 



?8 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 

But God's voice, speaking through the spir- 
itual sense, does not summon the thought of 
men simply to the larger spiritual unities, nor 
to the far fields of evangelical opportunity. He 
makes upon every man personally, and for the 
entire scope of his activities and influence, an 
uncompromising demand for ethical living. 
The inner motive of business must be that of 
honest dealing. The man of superior privilege 
must absolutely take no ill-advantage of his 
less favored neighbor. The rich must be a real 
brother of the poor. In the handling of his 
treasure he must be sensitively responsive to 
his obligation as a steward of Christ. Each 
man, in his sphere, must feel the responsibility 
of service. To each, in the social organism, 
there is alotted some special sphere of duty 
which he alone can best fill. Service is the 
binding law of the Christian life. To the 
obedient it furnishes a supreme reward both of 
usefulness and of joy. It was to Christ both 
meat and drink to do the will of his Father in 
heaven. 

When the individual, in his personal life, in 
the home, in society, in civic relations, in all 
relations, lives ethically after the ideal Christian 
standard, there will be a new standardization 
for the whole life of the community. This 
would mean both in business and in the State, 



THE HOLY SPIRIT 79 

no more soulless corporations, corporations 
exercising an unscrupulous use of power for 
selfish and unjust ends. It would mean the 
ethical administration of public office, the 
absence of graft from politics. It w^ould mean 
the merciless uprooting and exorcism from 
society of evil traffics, of traffic in intemper- 
ance, of organized ministries to lust, of every- 
thing that works ill to the social organism. It 
would mean opportunity for childhood, justice 
to the poor, the practical installment every- 
where of just standards of human worth. This 
field is one of infinite suggestiveness. It is as 
broad in its claims as man's capacity for 
thought and service. It is in all this unlimited 
field, in its every last and minutest section, that 
the Holy Spirit makes demand upon human 
life. When we speak, then, of Christian ex- 
perience, it is manifestly something, both in 
its ideal and normal scope, far broader than 
has as yet been very generally realized either 
in the conception or practice of the ordinary 
religious life. To be a Christian, in Christ's 
sense, is the loftiest realization possible to 
man. 

The age is indebted to Rudolf Eucken for 
much clear and exceptionally powerful state- 
ment of spiritual truth. In his volume Can We 
Still Be Christians? he seems to take somewhat 



80 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 

dubious views of the present world-states of 
Christianity. Taking into full view the great 
advances of modern civilization, in learning, in 
wealth, in the bewildering multiplication of 
inventive appliances ministering to the luxury 
of life, he still vividly shows that unless mankind 
shall come under the governance of some higher 
spiritual principle, such as that idealized in 
Christianity, then, notwithstanding all of its in- 
tellectual and material wealth, the human race 
awaits only the doom of moral bankruptcy 
and hopelessness. 

The Christian faith owes much to Eucken 
for his clear showing of the world's helplessness 
without some supreme spiritual guidance such 
as that which he clearly concedes is found more 
perfectly represented in Christianity than in 
all other sources. Yet from a careful effort 
to understand him, I can but be impressed that 
Eucken himself fails in apprehension of an 
adequate measurement of the genius, adapta- 
bility, and sufficiency of Christianity for fully 
meeting the moral and spiritual needs of 
humanity. The spirit of Christianity has been 
too narrowly measured. When seen in its 
all-inspiring perfection it cannot fail to demon- 
strate itself as the supreme Light, Hope, and 
Salvation of the race. Christianity will succeed. 
It can have no final rival. If, apparently, it 



THE HOLY SPIRIT 81 

has in any sense proven a failure, such apparent 
failure is best accounted for on Lessing's 
basis that Christianity as a system of world- 
moral government has never yet been fairly 
tried. 

On an unlimited scale does the Holy Spirit 
deal with the interests of human life. On such 
a scale only can the significance of the ideal 
Christian experience itself be measured. The 
high values of such experience touch infinite 
areas. 



IV 
CONVERSION 



If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things 
are passed away; behold, all things are become new. — 
2 Corinthians 5. 17. 

The students most hostile to the claim of orthodox Chris- 
tianity willingly concede the importance of the fact of con- 
version in the life of the early Church. The transitions in 
personal life are so numerous and so well marked that they 
cannot be overlooked. The critic is forced to concede the 
fact of these spiritual phenomena and their moral genuine- 
ness. He may think the early believers deluded, but he can 
find no explanation which will account for the spread of 
Christianity and for the endurance with which it lasted 
through the fires of persecution other than the transforma- 
tion wrought in the inner life of the believers in Chris- 
tianity. The critic will not deny that the early believers 
in Christianity were from the ranks of ordinary people like 
ourselves, and that through the influence of their belief they 
became transformed into marvels of moral persistence and 
endurance. — Bishop Francis J. McConnell. 

It is a fact of experience that whenever we submit utterly, 
affectionately, irreversibly to the best we know, at that in- 
stant there flashes through us with quick, splendid interior 
unexpected illumination, a Power not ourselves. It is a fixed 
natural law that when the soul yields utterly to God, he 
streams into the spirit, giving a new sense of his presence 
and imparting a strength unknown before. — Joseph Cook. 

As we proceed farther in our inquiry we shall see that 
what is attained is often an altogether new level of spiritual 
vitality, a relatively heroic level, in which impossible things 
have become possible, and new energies and endurances are 
shown. The personality is changed, the man is born anew. 
— William James. 



CHAPTER IV 

CONVERSION 

The term "conversion/' in the Christian 
sense, has been declared to represent the 
greatest moral event in human experience. It 
means the turning of the soul's vision toward 
the face of God. It is an experience which can 
come only from the surrender of will and heart 
to the Divine Spirit. Its processes, like the 
dawn, may come without observation; but 
they really mean for the individual transforma- 
tion of the spirit, the birth of a new moral 
springtime in the soul, the dating of a new 
spiritual life. Conversion often announces it- 
self in an inrush of divine joy, an illuminating 
ecstasy, an inexpressible sense of spiritual eman- 
cipation. It is something distinct from all 
previous experiences, as though the soul had 
come newly into a transfiguring and rapturous 
life. If conversion really means a new-found 
harmony of the soul with God, a harmony 
wrought by the inworking Spirit, bringing 
forgiveness, illumination, a new joy, unwonted 
spiritual strength to the life, then indeed 



86 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 

conversion must rank as a superlative event in 
the moral history of any man. It means the 
merger of a human soul with the life of God. 

A wide historic view must teach us that the 
phenomena of conversion have not always 
been confined to historic Christendom. And 
if the view, as previously expressed, of the 
omnipresent mission of the Holy Spirit as 
enlightening every man that cometh into the 
world, is true, then, under the ministry of the 
same Holy Spirit, moral transformations, or 
conversions, may occur among all races and 
under all religious systems. 

Manifestly, experiences so wrought are bereft 
of vital advantages which attend conversions 
in an atmosphere of Christian instruction and 
example, but that outside the Christian com- 
munity there should be found no spiritually 
transformed characters would be a gratuitous 
and sinister assumption. No less a conspicuous 
and sound theologian than Dr. William Newton 
Clarke teaches that: "To Christian philosophy, 
every upward movement of the human mind 
suggests that Christ, in his universal relation 
to humanity, may be able to pour his new life 
into open hearts, even where there is complete 
ignorance concerning the fact of his history 
and work." 

The present discussion, however, will be 



CONVERSION 87 

confined to illustrations found within the limits 
of historical Christianity. The narratives of 
the Old Testament are richly suggestive in 
phenomenal incidents as relating to conversion. 
When we enter the New Testament we find 
great stress laid upon both the necessity and the 
actual experience of conversion as initial to the 
Christian life. It radically connects trans- 
formation of both character and conduct with 
conversion. This change is set forth under 
such figures as: "a translation out of darkness 
into marvelous light"; "being born again, born 
from above"; "redemption from all iniquity"; 
"passing out of death into life"; "turning from 
the power of Satan unto God"; "a new crea- 
tion"; "putting off an old, and putting on a 
new man"; "becoming children of God"; 
"having Christ dwelling in the heart by faith"; 
"dying and rising again." 

Such are a few of the vivid figures of the New 
Testament picturing conversion and its fruits. 
Their import is unmistakable. There can be 
no weakening of their meaning. Their color 
is both vivid and enduring. 

Our present intellectual mood is one fruitful 
of religious psychology. The psychic phenom- 
ena of the religious life are being profoundly 
searched, defined, and classified. This process 
should prove no menace to faith. Our confi- 



88 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 

dence in a divine relation to the souPs conver- 
sion need not in the least be jarred. The 
processes of conversion, however divinely ef- 
fectuated, doubtless conform to the constitu- 
tional laws of the soul — laws which God himself 
originally ordained. All that psychology can 
do is, from its acquired knowledge of mental 
laws, to trace processes in conversion. But 
this is by no means to assign or to define the 
Cause, or causes, of conversion itself. Psy- 
chology is only one department of philosophy. 
All that all philosophy can do at its best is to 
give orderly classification to processes that may 
be apparent in whatever field of nature. Phil- 
osophy when it enters upon the task of defining 
or of assigning law to the action of the ultimate 
Cause is as impotent as a child. No philo- 
sophic vision is keen enough to trace the visible 
path along which God moves in his creations 
of life and of soul. What is true in the higher 
realm of spirit is just as true for workers in all 
departments of physical science. All that 
science can do is to discover, and to trace if it 
may, orderly processes in nature. That in- 
visible and omnipotent Cause which ordains 
these processes is one which forever transcends 
the vision of science. It would seem that the 
scientist, in whatever field, ought to be among 
the most reverent of men. His pursuits are 



CONVERSION 89 

always on the borderland of the Infinite Mys- 
tery. 

It would doubtless be good for a working Chris- 
tianity if all its teachers and preachers were 
versed in psychology. This would render im- 
possible many stupid blunders now committed, 
and it would redeem the life of the Church from 
many scandals of intellectual absurdity. But 
it would still remain that beyond the border- 
land of all psychological exploration the Chris- 
tian faith sees infinite room for the divine 
working. However familiar one may become, 
then, with what William James has pronounced 
the "peripheral and central" regions of mind, 
the ideas and feelings lying near the periphery 
being frozen and inoperative, while those at the 
center are hot and alive; and of how at con- 
version the peripheral ideas and feelings change 
places with the central, thus silencing old ideas 
and feelings, and at the heated center bringing 
to life and expression ideas and feelings hitherto 
voiceless — whatever one may think or believe 
about all this, he is no nearer accounting for di- 
vine causes in conversion than at the beginning. 
Indeed, William James himself suggests that 
these very conditions which he describes may 
be the channels which God himself has ordained 
as his approaches to the soul. 

Philosophy is quite powerless to yield to us 



90 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 

highest satisfactions in our attempts to explore 
spiritual experiences and their causes. Life is 
more than philosophy. For the Christian life 
we shall find no so reliable rule as that prag- 
matic rule announced by our Lord, "By their 
fruits ye shall know them." This utterance 
of Christ is valid for the highest ranges of ex- 
perience. As tested by this criterion, Christian 
conversion has proven itself as of the highest 
significance and value in human history. The 
very universal range of its phenomena carries 
its reality beyond all rational skepticism.. The 
reality of Christian conversion has been indubi- 
tably attested through the centuries by un- 
numbered millions of witnesses, multitudes of 
whom represent the most competent minds of 
the race. The expression of this experience 
has voiced itself through all ranges of human 
ability, from the highest genius down to men of 
the most ordinary mentality. But, as we would 
judge of the quality and possibilities of music 
from the productions of highest musical genius, 
so in summoning witnesses to demonstrate the 
practical values of Christian conversion we may 
very properly call upon those not only intel- 
lectually most competent but whose personal 
Christian experience has reached the highest 
levels. In passing, it should be clearly stated 
and definitely emphasized that Christian values 



CONVERSION 91 

in character are not always coupled with 
intense, nor necessarily with very conscious, 
emotional experience. Doubtless both tem- 
perament and mental habit have much to do 
in deciding emotional action. While it is true 
that religious experience stirs the emotional 
soul, no mistake could be more mischievous 
than to assume to measure the values of re- 
ligious character by the emotional test. The 
most vital condition to Christian character is 
an intelligent surrender of the will and affec- 
tions to the divine will. This may occur 
without great emotional accompaniment. But 
wherever this has taken place a new life is 
installed in the heart, and the unemotional 
subject of that life may be most soldierly 
heroic and loyal in all essential qualities of 
Christian character. 

In summoning witnesses to the divine fact 
of Christian conversion, the case of Saul of 
Tarsus should not be omitted. The narrative 
of his conversion is fairly plowed into the 
structure of Christian history. Paul has been 
called a visionary and an epileptic, and, there- 
fore, an unreliable witness. But, as Professor 
Borden P. Bowne once suggested, "Saint Paul 
may have had a fit on the road to Damascus, 
but it has been the only known fit to be fol- 
lowed by such mighty historical consequences." 



92 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 

In the light of "historical consequences" such 
criticism as the foregoing stands out in naked 
absurdity. The fact is that Saint Paul was 
one of the most dynamic characters of all 
history. He was a man of superlative gifts, 
rich in culture, of towering ambitions, of im- 
perial will. While still young he attained to 
commanding position in the Jewish nation. 
His Pharisaical zeal was unlimited and appar- 
ently unquenchable. Highly moral in life, 
conscientious to the last degree, his convictions 
were rock-firm. He was ready to oppose to 
the death those whom he believed to be enemies 
of the true religion. He was the trusted and 
zealous emissary of the Jewish Church. To 
no man of all his people was there promised 
a more brilliant career. 

But suddenly one day something happened 
in his life. There came to him a revela- 
tion in a light so blinding as to smite 
him to the earth. He both saw the face and 
heard the voice of Jesus, whom he was 
persecuting. There was flashed into him 
the consciousness that he was fighting 
against God. From that moment he turned 
his back upon all his previous life, upon his 
friends, his ambitions, his worldly possessions 
and prospects. From that moment, with a 
changed spirit, he entered upon a new life. 



CONVERSION 93 

He gave himself as a very slave to Jesus Christ. 
His new life, from its very beginning, was 
marked by an amazing series of physical hard- 
ships, suffering, privation, and peril. His was 
an unbroken exemplification of the highest 
character, tempers, and conduct. In the face 
of all obstacles he gave himself in unstinted 
sacrifice, that he might preach Christ to all 
men. No persecution could daunt his courage, 
no hardship quench his zeal. In physical 
weakness and in strength, in privation and 
want, in plenty and in hunger, in season and 
out of season he wrought with unabating ardor 
to fulfill the calling given him of Jesus Christ. 
He never succumbed to discouragements. He 
commanded the secret of a holy joy amid the 
most depressing environments. His spirit rose 
in sublime fortitude in hours of severest trial. 
He was a gentleman, a great lover of men, 
thoughtful of others when himself in want — 
and all this always. 

One day, under the escort of a Roman 
guard, he was led forth from prison to the 
headsman's ax. He neither murmured, nor 
was he fearful. His fortitude failed not. His 
last remark was one of exultant confidence 
that death was to him the gate to triumphant 
coronation. Thus there passed into history a 
moral Colossus, a man whose thought has 



94 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 

swayed the Christian centuries, one whose 
very example has been an inspiration to high 
fortitude and endeavor for martyrs and saints 
for two millenniums. The career of Saul of 
Tarsus, both as persecutor and apostle, is 
indelibly written in history. His Christian 
conversion, the superlative moral heroism of 
his entire after life, culminating at last in mar- 
tyrdom, have never been explained on natural 
grounds. They form a history of a human 
life such as we could expect only from the 
continuous girdings and support of Divinest 
inspirations. If God, by his Spirit, were not 
distinctively in this life, then we may as well 
at once abandon all claim to spiritual values 
as evidenced in what we know as "Christian 
conversion." 

Later, but still in the early centuries, there 
is furnished one other preeminent instance of 
phenomenal conversion. In the ages from 
Paul to Luther, there appears no more illus- 
trious name than that of Augustine. He was 
born in Numidia just after the middle of the 
fourth century. He was highly educated, thor- 
oughly at home in the foremost philosophical 
thought of his times, a man of enormous na- 
tive powers. He entered upon a brilliant 
career as rhetorician and advocate, the pro- 
fession of which he practiced successively at 



CONVERSION 95 

Tagaste, Carthage, Rome, and Milan. His 
early intellectual life wavered between a pro- 
nounced skepticism and a sort of philosophic 
faith. He was withal a libertine, thoroughly 
under the thrall of sensuality. But, with all 
his waywardness, he was never able to escape 
the holy example of his Christian mother — 
Monica. In his Confessions he relates as clearly 
as Saint Paul had done before him the strug- 
gle that went on between his higher and lower 
selfhood. His conscience urged him to right- 
eousness of life; his lusts held him in bondage. 
Time and again he made promise of reform, but 
the allurements of the flesh kept him irresolute. 

One day, when in his garden behind his 
lodgings in Milan, he seemed to hear a voice 
which said to him, "Take and read." This 
was repeated three times over. He opened 
the Bible apparently at random, and his eye 
fell upon these words of Saint Paul: "The 
night is far spent, the day is at hand: let us 
therefore cast off the works of darkness, and 
let us put on the armor of light. Let us walk 
honestly, as in the day; not in rioting and 
drunkenness, not in chambering and wanton- 
ness, not in strife and envying. But put ye 
on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not pro- 
vision for the flesh, to fulfill the lusts thereof." 

The passage searched him as by a lightning 



96 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 

flash. He made instant surrender of soul. 
From that moment his life, with unwavering 
consecration of its tremendous forces, was 
dedicated to a new career. He developed a 
religious genius of the highest order. He lived 
the life of a saint. Eucken characterizes him 
as the "single great philosopher on the basis 
of Christianity proper the world has had." 
While he professed himself interested only "in 
God and the soul," his thought, like a search- 
light, shot out into all questions that per- 
tained to human life. Harnack, in substance, 
says of him: 

In point of fact, the whole development of Western 
life, in all its phases, was powerfully affected by his 
teaching. This, his unique ascendency in the direc- 
tion of the thought and life of the West, is due in 
part to the particular period in history in which 
his work was done, in part to the richness and 
depth of his mind and the force of his individuality, 
and in part to the special circumstances of his 
conversion to Christianity. He stood on the water- 
shed of two worlds. The old world was passing 
away; the new world was entering upon its heritage; 
and it fell to him to mediate the transference of 
the culture of the one to the other. It has been 
strikingly remarked that the miserable existence 
of the Roman empire in the West almost seems 
to have been prolonged for the express purpose of 
affording an opportunity for the influence of Au- 
gustine to be exerted on universal history. 

From that day of his conversion Augustine 



CONVERSION 97 

lived the life of a great Christian. His theol- 
ogy and philosophy, more than those of any 
other man who has ever lived, with the possi- 
ble exception of Saint Paul, has ruled the 
thought of the Church. The genius of his 
mind and heart has very largely decided the 
course of Christian history even down to our 
own times. The Christian life of Augustine, 
not less than that of Saint Paul, must be 
accredited to the sovereign incoming and abid- 
ing of God into the soul of a great human 
genius. 

I have specially emphasized the cases of 
Paul and of Augustine, because of the im- 
perishable celebrity of these men. Philosophy, 
though sometimes unsympathetic, has been 
compelled to take full note of their religious 
history. But by no means, in the discussion 
of this subject, is one under the necessity of 
confining himself to exceptional characters. 
The student of the phenomena of Christian 
conversion is embarrassed by the very wealth 
of his material. One standing on the cliffs 
might as well undertake to count the number- 
less waves of the sea, as to attempt a sum- 
mons of all competent witnesses to this Chris- 
tian experience. The succession of these 
witnesses has been unbroken through the cen- 
turies, and their numbers have formed an 



98 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 

ever-growing and countless army. Conversion 
is a standing moral miracle in history. Its 
operation has by no means been confined to 
the wise and the gifted. It has found a chief 
ministry of regeneration and illumination among 
the common and unlettered, among the way- 
farers and toilers of mankind. Christ himself 
pronounced beatitudes upon the meek, the 
poor, the persecuted. 

It awakened the scorn and ridicule of the 
haughty and exclusive circles in the classic 
civilizations that in the ranks of early Chris- 
tianity "not many wise men after the flesh, 
not many mighty, not many noble" were 
enrolled. But there dwelt in this gospel which 
so appealed to poor and ordinary men an up- 
lifting and transforming power so mighty as 
morally to face that ancient world toward 
new ideals. Christianity rapidly spread over 
the Roman empire, and its own ideals were 
widely substituted for the classical philos- 
ophies. While making its appeals to all strata 
of society, Christianity carried in itself an 
uplifting, a creative and inspiring, power which 
no pagan philosophy, no imperial edicts, could 
successfully withstand. It was a power which 
turned that ancient "world upside down." 
Christianity has always shown a marvelous 
power for uplifting, illuminating, ennobling the 



CONVERSION 99 

common man. From its humblest social ranks, 
many of its illustrious workers have been 
lifted to the glory of apostolic careers. But 
this innumerable army of witnesses — all, both 
great and small, larger and less — has come to 
the Kingdom through the portal of Christian 
conversion. 

What are some of the evidential values of 
conversion and of the religious experience to 
which it is the introduction? When it comes 
to the downright proof of any moral ques- 
tion rational logic is frequently unequal to 
the situation. Religion is more a matter of 
life than of logic. Life reports itself through 
experience, and leaves logic to take care of 
itself. Still, if religious experience is to validify 
itself in practical values for life, it is a necessity 
of reason that the criteria of such experience 
should fall within rational rule. In an attempt 
to state the conditions and limitations under 
which rational validity can be given to expe- 
rience, I know of no one who has more suc- 
cessfully or conclusively accomplished this 
task, than Professor H. Bisseker, of Richmond 
College, London. That this writer may speak 
for himself, I quote here in full the four criteria 
which he lays down: 

We would suggest four effective tests of the 
validity of an inward experience: 



100 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 

1. It must be in harmony with reason, and must 
fit naturally into the general framework of our 
knowledge. It may, of course, transcend the limits 
of knowledge which unaided reason has yet attained, 
but it may not contradict reason. 

2. It must accord with man's own inner con- 
stitution. All contact with truth will help forward 
man's self-realization, and every step toward full 
self-realization implies a nearer approach to the 
unification of the self. An inward experience, 
therefore, which claims validity must tend to in- 
ward harmony of personality, and help to unify life. 

3. If the experience be of an ethical or religious 
character, it must, further, be in agreement with 
the highest moral sense of the race, and action on 
the assumption of its validity must carry a man 
further morally than action based on theories less 
true. Applied universally, it must be such as 
would secure universal progress. 

4. It must be capable of becoming universal. 
That which is ultimately true can scarcely be 
accessible only to a limited esoteric circle. Hence 
an inward experience that would justify its validity 
to others must be such that each who fulfills the 
needful conditions shall be able to attain it in all 
its essential characteristics. 1 

As this writer proceeds to say: "These 
criteria may be accepted without a single 
reservation in the realm of religious experience." 
Under the fourth test our author calls just 
attention to a difficulty which might to some 
minds query the acceptance of this test. As 
has already been noted, the phenomenal, or 

1 See The Chief Corner-Stone, Dr. W. T. Davison, editor, 
pp. 225ff. 



CONVERSION 101 

emotional, experience in conversion is far from 
uniform in different subjects. It has been a 
matter of serious concern to many sincere 
minds that they have never been able to 
realize in their own experience a duplication 
of certain emotional phenomena to which others 
have joyfully testified in their conversion. 
Many have sought for a like experience, and 
it has been a grave disappointment to them 
that they have found it not. At this point 
seemingly certain types of religious experience 
do not seem capable of universal attainment. 
We may not forget, however, that the validity 
of religious experience must have final attesta- 
tion on ethical rather than on emotional tests. 
"And there it can securely rest. For the main 
outline of evangelical experience — the change 
in the direction of the will, the exercise of 
faith in the power of Christ, the resulting 
transformation of both mind and heart, and 
the consequent moral progress, steadily ad- 
vancing toward the fullest self-realization — 
this, without doubt, is possible to all." 

All souls that struggle to aspire, 
All hearts of prayer by thee are lit. 

The remaining chapters of this study will 
be devoted to inquiry as to some of the evi- 
dential values of religious experience. 



PART SECOND 
EVIDENTIAL VALUES 



V 
CHRISTIAN CHARACTER 



The dear Lord's best interpreters 

Are humble human souls; 
The Gospel of a life like theirs 

Is more than books or scrolls. 
From scheme and creed the light goes out, 

The saintly fact survives: 
The blessed Master none can doubt 

Revealed in holy lives. 

— John G. Whittier. 

For the fruit of the Spirit is in all goodness and righteous- 
ness and truth. — Ephesians 5. 9. 

That ye may be blameless and harmless, the sons of God, 
without rebuke, in the midst of a crooked and perverse 
nation, among whom ye shine as lights in the world. — 
Philippians 2. 15. 

There are multitudes of men and women in out-of-the- 
way places, in backwoods, towns and uneventful farms, who 
are the salt of the earth and the light of the world in their 
communities, because they have had experiences which re- 
vealed to them Realities that their neighbors missed, and 
powers to live by which the mere "churchgoers" failed to 
find. — Professor Maurice Jones. 

The supreme question for modern civilization is the forma- 
tion of character. Of what use are our material advance- 
ments if they leave only a dismal emptiness within? Of 
what use carrying the people at sixty miles an hour if they 
are fools when they get into the train and fools when they 
get out? Of what use our latest telegraphy if it flings across 
the world no better news than of commercial frauds, of 
society intrigues, of the follies of the rich, and the discontent 
of the poor? You may start your common schools, and train 
your children into clever devils — to thieve better, to lie 
more plausibly. You may teach them to read, that they 
may saturate their minds with filth. Any education that is 
not first and foremost a training in character is only a 
preparation for villainy's more effective service. — /. Brierley. 



CHAPTER V 
CHRISTIAN CHARACTER 

The word "character" is old. In form it 
is almost a direct transferrence from the Greek. 
It originally stood for the tool of the stamper, 
as also for the impression made, as in the 
stamping of a coin. It stood for an identity, 
for a distinctive marking of values. It came 
in course of time to take on other meanings. 
Webster has given the following, which well 
defines its modern uses: "The sum of qualities 
or features, by which a person or a thing is 
distinguished from others; the aggregate of 
distinctive mental and moral qualities belong- 
ing to an individual or a race as a whole; the 
stamp of individuality impressed by nature, 
education, or habit; that which a person or 
thing really is; essential peculiarity; kind; sort; 
nature." 

The distinctive emergence of the word 
"character" into moral uses is perhaps more 
due to Kant than to any other writer. He 
taught that moral character alone is character 
in the true sense. His view is that what is 

107 



108 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 

commonly called natural character, including 
physical quality, native disposition, and tem- 
perament, is merely what nature has made a 
man. Moral character is something which a 
man makes for himself. The factors which 
enter into the making of a man's natural char- 
acter have been well indicated by Principal 
Fairbairn. He names six factors: "race, fam- 
ily, place, time, education, and opportunity." 
These factors contribute to a man all that 
simply natural conditions can furnish. "The 
most that the natural view expects from a 
man is that he be equal to the sum of all the 
conditions concerned in his making. If he 
transcends them, then we are landed either 
in an insolubility or in the recognition of an 
unknown factor which may be named personal 
genius, but can hardly be described as normal 
or according to law. In any case this appeal 
to an undiscovered or incalculable cause differs 
only in name from the appeal to the super- 
natural." 

Moral character, in the Kantian sense, is 
moral inwardness. This kind of character 
comes only from an habitual, purposeful train- 
ing of the will and conscience in accordance 
with the demands of an enlightened under- 
standing. Character thus means a structure 
built by disciplinary processes in conformity 



CHRISTIAN CHARACTER 109 

to morally ennobling ideals. It remains true, 
however, that character built after the most 
rugged order of self-discipline, may still be 
very far from Christian. Disciplined character 
was conspicuously developed in the schools 
of ancient Stoicism. Kant himself was much 
influenced by Stoical ideals. 

Real character, good or bad, is the outcome 
of cumulative processes. Ideals allure the 
mind. The alluring fruit is plucked and tasted. 
The taste begets appetite, desire. Appetite 
creates demand for repetition, indulgence. Re- 
peated indulgence begets habit, fixity; and this 
means the shaping of the soul into molds 
which habit forms, character, the setting of a 
life in the direction of its destiny. Whether 
this direction is toward good or ill will de- 
pend upon the quality of the shaping ideals, 
those invisible forces which give finality to 
the controlling habit. All high and valuable 
character is a product of slow growth, growth 
toward a definite goal. It is something to be 
shaped by intelligent purpose, nurtured in 
watchfulness, self -discipline, self-denial, and al- 
ways urged on by diligent effort. It is not a 
thing of mere chance or of spontaneous growth. 
Pestalozzi once said: "Toadstools may easily 
spring forth from a dunghill when it rains; 
but human dignity, spiritual depth, and great- 



110 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 

ness of character do not grow out of routine 
even when the sun shines. " It thus appears 
that moral character, character of a kind to 
command the approval, the esteem, and the 
emulation of men, is a prize for which a price 
must be paid, even the price of eternal vigilance. 

With all this, when we come to study the 
claims for, and the grounds of, distinctively 
Christian character, we pass to a new realm 
of thought and experience. With no undue 
claim, and with no irrational assumption, it 
is to be asserted that Christian experience is 
realized only in a spiritual environment with 
which a nonspiritual, or agnostic, philosophy 
has no qualification for dealing. It was funda- 
mental in the teaching of Saint Paul that the 
merely natural man cannot know the things 
of the Spirit, for they are to be spiritually dis- 
cerned. However difficult to philosophic reason 
may seem this doctrine, however audacious its 
challenge to the pride of intellect, it rests 
vitally at the very foundations of Christian 
experience. 

The Christian religion, as no other historic 
faith, calls for a direct, conscious, and vital 
relationship of the individual soul to God. 
It means really an indwelling of God in the 
life of the soul. Its fundamental assumptions 
are: that for man as a sinner God has insti- 



CHRISTIAN CHARACTER 111 

tuted an effective redemption from sin; that 
upon the penitent soul the Divine Spirit sets 
the direct seal of pardon; that in the pardoned 
soul there is wrought a moral regeneration, 
begetting within that soul a new, divine life; 
that to the soul thus newborn God specifically, 
distinctively imparts himself. It is a function 
of the Spirit to bring to this soul a sense of 
its adoption into God's spiritual household, a 
comforting sense of pardon for sin, a luminous 
consciousness of a new life begun in God. 
All this initially. In all the after Christian 
life the Holy Spirit is to companion himself 
with the life of the obedient believer. He 
abides with this soul as Illumination, Inspira- 
tion, Moral Reenforcement, Sanctifier, Guide; 
so that within the life there are richly and 
increasingly begotten the fruits of the Spirit, 
such as "love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gen- 
tleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance." 
Of course this is a radical program. It is a 
program so removed from the experience of 
the natural man, that Saint Paul frankly de- 
clares that to such it may seem foolishness. 
But nothing less than this, Christianity de- 
clares, is God's purpose to be experimentally 
realized in human life. This program im- 
periously and uncompromisingly insists that it 
shall be tested upon its own conditions. It 



112 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 

must be tried by its own laws. It yields to 
no jurisdiction of unsympathetic criticism or of 
alien philosophy. It requires absolute surren- 
der and obedience of soul. Its initiates enter 
the luminous life only through the narrow 
portals of repentance, obedience, faith. Christ 
said, "If any man will do his will, he shall know 
of the doctrine." 

It ought to be profitable to glance briefly 
at the biblical ideals of the godly character. 
Central among the precepts of the Old Testa- 
ment is the demand for "goodness." "Depart 
from evil, and do good." Men are held respon- 
sible for moral distinctions: "Woe unto them 
that call evil good, and good evil; that put 
darkness for light, and light for darkness; 
that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!" 
"Trust in the Lord, and do good." "He hath 
showed thee, O man, what is good; and what 
doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, 
and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with 
thy God?" In the later historic developments 
of the Hebrew religion less and less stress 
was laid upon the outer and ritual performances 
of worship, and an increasing emphasis was 
laid upon the hidden motives of the soul. Jer- 
emiah, the prophet of spiritual vision, placed 
Israel's ideal in the period when God should 
make a new covenant with his people, putting 



CHRISTIAN CHARACTER 113 

his law in their inward parts, and writing it 
in their hearts. 

In the New Testament we discover that 
Jesus adds both extension, depth, and clear- 
ness to the prophetic conception of the godly 
character. The goodness of God is with him 
absolute. He also sees in men infinite possi- 
bilities of goodness. He places upon his follow- 
ers the most imperative and exacting demands 
for goodness. With him all values center in 
motives. The heart must be first pure before 
the life can yield good fruits. Not that which 
is without, but that which is within, defileth 
the man. From an evil heart proceed the 
evils of life. By their fruits ye shall know 
them. A good tree cannot bring forth evil 
fruit. Christ's moral mission with men deals 
regeneratively at the very seats of the soul. 
Righteousness and goodness must be centrally 
enthroned before the life can move out on the 
highway of Christian character. The pecul- 
iarity and perfection of Christ's system is that 
he not only presents in himself the perfect, 
the flawless, example of goodness, but, as we 
have already emphasized, he perfectly imparts 
his own Spirit to all who fully give themselves 
to him. He came that he might give power 
to men to become the sons of God, even to as 
many as should believe on his name. 



114 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 

No teaching could be more definite, clear, 
or radical than the pronouncements of Saint 
Paul upon the new life in Christ. To him the 
Christian life is a life exalted and separate in 
the world. Its subjects are distinct from all 
other characters. "That which is born of the 
flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the 
Spirit is spirit." The spiritual life is begotten, 
is born, from above. The Spirit of God him- 
self witnesses to the sonship of his own spiritual 
children. We "know that we abide in him 
and he in us, because he hath given us of his 
Spirit." Paul makes a sharp discrimination 
between those who are obedient and those 
who are disobedient to Christ Jesus. The 
former he describes as the "children of light," 
the latter as the "children of darkness." The 
children of light are those who walk in the 
Spirit, and they are known by their charac- 
ters, "for the fruit of the Spirit is in all good- 
ness, and righteousness and truth." Again he 
says: "The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, 
longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meek- 
ness, temperance: against such there is no 
law." Thus, in two distinct statements, the 
apostle presents "goodness" as one of the 
fruits of the Spirit. It would seem that no 
terms more expressive than those used could 
be employed to set forth the kind of character 



CHRISTIAN CHARACTER 115 

which is expected of the Spirit-guided man — 
"all goodness, righteousness, and truth." 

There can be no doubt as to the distinctive 
and positive teaching of the New Testament 
as to the standards of Christian character. 
If this teaching is true, then Christianity in- 
stalls a new order of moral life in human 
society. We are forced to believe that God 
himself has undertaken through Christianity 
the building of a new spiritual kingdom in 
the earth, a kingdom the ultimate purpose of 
which is the spiritual transformation of man- 
kind. Preeminent among the qualities of 
citizenship in this kingdom is that which 
Christ and Saint Paul both so distinctly em- 
phasize — "goodness," righteousness, saintliness 
of character. So much for biblical ideals. 
How, then? Are all the demands of the Bible 
for a distinct righteousness of character Utopian 
and impracticable? Are all the high ideals of 
the New Testament for the individual and 
for civilization only absurd and foolish dreams? 
Let us ask twenty centuries of Christian his- 
tory to give us answer. 

The most persistent, transforming, and up- 
lifting single force in civilization for the last 
two thousand years has been the Christian 
religion. Let it be admitted that in many 
periods of its history its essential power and 



116 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 

purity have been much neutralized by the 
intermingling in its life of alien and worldly 
elements. Nevertheless, Christianity in its en- 
tire course has borne on its bosom the world's 
weal. Its history has been attended by all 
the reforms that have proven of value to 
human society. Wherever it has prevailed it 
has created a high standard of social morality, 
has begotten among men a helpful sense of 
human brotherhood, has invested the life of 
the poor with an atmosphere of sympathy and 
of hope, has inspired the noblest ministries 
of benevolence for the unfortunate and the 
needy. It has exalted everywhere the ideals 
of human worth by presenting God as the 
Father of all souls, and by holding before all 
men the possibilities of a glorified immortality. 
Throughout its history Christianity has been 
the creator and always the promoter of every 
good which has ministered to the social, intel- 
lectual, and moral life of mankind. Historic 
Christianity took its rise in a most forbidding 
world, a world in which government, religions, 
castes, traditions, social and moral customs, 
all of which would seem to be invulnerable 
to the new faith, were leagued against it. 
The Roman world had wondrously gathered 
into itself at this time the great laws, philos- 
ophies, and religions of mankind. Regnant in 



CHRISTIAN CHARACTER 117 

all lands from the Euphrates to the Pillars of 
Hercules, Rome was now more cosmopolitan, 
especially in its philosophy and religion, than 
had ever been true of any preceding civiliza- 
tion. Herself the most legally imperial of 
governments, highly jealous of her prerogatives, 
her heritage was rich in ideals of the most 
perfect art, in philosophies the greatest to 
which human thought had ever given birth, 
and in her Pantheon she had domesticated 
the most diverse religions. Her general atmos- 
phere was favorable to large freedom of thought. 
But, notwithstanding her unlimited dominion, 
her vast heirship of intellect and of art, and 
the wide latitude of her religious hospitality, 
this Rome was effete and dissolute. There 
inhered in her communities all extremes of 
wealth and of poverty, of luxury and of wretch- 
edness. Her society was caste-ridden. For the 
slave and the poor, the haughty aristocrat 
had no more regard than for so many beasts 
of burden. Rome was the mistress of the 
world, but in the very height of her power 
her most privileged life was cynical, faithless, 
dissolute, blase, hopeless. 

If we were to consider alone the moral and 
social conditions of this pagan world, they 
were such as to make seemingly impossible the 
success of a new religion founded by a Galilsean 



118 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 

Peasant, himself born in an ox-shed, and 
meeting death at last by crucifixion. The 
peasant would be despised, and his crucifixion 
would be accepted as a brand of deepest crim- 
inality. But if to all this we add the fact that 
Christianity in its very nature carried the 
most open challenge and rebuke against the 
cherished traditions and social customs of this 
powerful world, it can appear no less than a 
veritable miracle of Almightiness that it could 
have secured for itself any standing whatso- 
ever in that Roman world. To the philosophic 
mind the preaching of the cross was foolishness. 
To the imperial vision the proposal to estab- 
lish a new spiritual kingdom among men was 
an absurdity. To the powerful and the haughty 
it was unthinkable that a religion having such 
an origin could really bring any ministry to 
their deepest needs. Its social standing was 
too humble and despised to command for it 
any favor, much less a welcome, in fashionable 
circles of that imperial age. Christ unhesitat- 
ingly began, and carried on, his ministry among 
the poor. This in itself was an affront to the 
ruling social life. For a long period it was a 
contemptuous taunt against Christianity that 
it recruited its subjects from the slaves and 
outcast populations, from those whom society 
branded as sinners and harlots. Moreover, 



CHRISTIAN CHARACTER 119 

Christianity moved under standards on which 
were inscribed ideals of a new and divinely 
inspired character. It called for the highest 
and purest moral conduct in the life of its 
subjects. Its very program awakened against 
it the intense ridicule and resentment of the 
age to which it came. 

Another historic element of opposition to be 
duly considered, is that which arose in the 
Hebrew community. The Hebrew religion had 
a large place among the faiths tolerated in 
Rome. Christ himself was a Jew. But his 
method called for such radical departure from, 
such revision and enlargement of, the out- 
standing things in Hebrew usage, as, if he 
were to succeed, to result in the very displace- 
ment of the Hebrew religion itself. Naturally, 
Christianity early drew to itself intense opposi- 
tion from the Jewish community. The inevi- 
table outcome was that the official power of 
Judaism employed itself in promoting the most 
violent opposition to the Christian faith. 

The outcome of all was that a religion 
which at first seemed of so obscure and con- 
temptible an origin as to command for itself 
only a judgment of scorn and ridicule, yet, as 
for mysterious reasons it continued to grow% 
finally drew to itself the most formidable and 
destructive persecution which could be devised 



120 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 

by the inventive genius, or carried into execu- 
tion by the seeming omnipotence, of the Roman 
empire. The ordeal of fire and blood, an 
ordeal of torture and of cruelty as inspired by 
official fury, which thus tested the very life 
of early Christianity, is something which sur- 
passes the power of our imagination to picture. 

The fact to be emphasized is that there was 
some prophetic inspiration, some moral quality, 
inhering in the faith of those early Christians 
that made them invincible against all human 
opposition. After the Roman authorities had 
done their worst, Tertullian could say to them: 
"All your ingenious cruelties can accomplish 
nothing; they are only a lure to this sect. 
Our numbers increase the more you destroy us. 
The blood of the Christians is their seed. . . . 
We are a people of yesterday, and yet we have 
filled every place belonging to you — cities, 
islands, castles, towns, assemblies, your very 
camp, your tribes, companies, palace, senate, 
forum. We leave your temples only. You 
count your armies, but our numbers in a 
single province will be greater." 

In the year A. D. 30, about the time of the 
crucifixion, the followers of Christ may have 
numbered about five hundred. By A. D. 100 
the disciples had increased to five hundred 
thousand. By A. D. 311, when the fires of 



CHRISTIAN CHARACTER 121 

martyrdom had died out and the arms of the 
executioners were palsied from overuse, the 
long orgie of human butchery having exhausted 
itself, the Christians numbered thirty million, 
and a Christian emperor sat upon the throne 
of the Caesars. At the close of the entire tragic 
series it was the testimony of Tertullian that 
Christians had been persecuted more on ac- 
count of their religion than for all other causes. 
We are to emphasize the fact that they were 
persecuted because of their outstanding char- 
acter, because of the austere purity of their 
morals, because of their unswerving loyalty 
to their convictions, because of their firm and 
open nonconformity to what they regarded as 
forbidden usages, yet usages thoroughly domes- 
ticated in the social and moral life of the 
age. All this was made a ground of capital 
offense against the Christians. 

And what finally were the offenses of these 
Christians? They utterly refused to join in 
the deification of the emperors. They would 
not take a pagan oath. They would not join 
in the rites of pagan worship. They were, in 
many cases, opposed to military service. They 
gave no countenance to the bloody games of 
the amphitheater and kindred spectacles. In 
their very multiplicity, they became a menace 
to the faiths of polytheism throughout the 



122 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 

empire. A complaint that Celsus made against 
them was that they were "men walling them- 
selves off and isolating themselves from man- 
kind/' He charged them with disloyalty to 
the state, and as impairing the solidity of the 
civilized world by their departure from the 
common belief. To many of the charges of 
Celsus the Christians would, indeed, have to 
plead guilty. They did abstain from the faiths 
and rites of paganism. They were bound in 
all conscience to stand by the demands of 
their faith, a faith which from its very nature 
was out of harmony with, and which must 
enter its protest and denial against, much of 
the ruling customs and faiths of the age. 

The history of these early Christians is 
indeed marvelous. It can be accounted for 
on no basis of creed or of organization. Chris- 
tianity had both creed and organization. But 
the real and only secret of its persistence and 
growth was in the life of God as experienced 
in the souls of men. This life proved itself 
invincible in the face of all opposition. Its 
influence, wherever felt, was transforming. It 
created a new motive and a new character 
wherever it entered into the life of men. Justin 
Martyr, the cool-headed philosopher, eloquently 
says that everywhere in the wake of Chris- 
tianity were to be found "slaves of sensuality 



CHRISTIAN CHARACTER 123 

who had become pure in morals, the avaricious 
and miserly who gave themselves in generous 
ministry to those in need, and the revengeful 
who had learned to pray for their enemies." 
He attributes all this to the grace of Jesus 
Christ as experienced in the lives of these 
men. Origen testifies to great numbers of 
persons who through the same grace were 
recovered from licentiousness, injustice, and 
covetousness. 

In considering the power of Christianity to 
transform, and to give new characters to, 
sinful and bad men, it seems well-nigh invidious 
to cite single instances. The reformation and 
salvation, the installment into right living, of 
abandoned and otherwise hopeless men is the 
standing miracle of Christianity. It was the 
sneer of Celsus and of Lucian, the classical 
satirists, that Christianity exploited itself in 
the reformation of slaves, of thieves, and that 
it sought its trophies among the very off- 
scourings of human society. The fact which 
robs the sneer of its sting is the ages-long 
demonstration which Christianity has furnished 
of its power to lift the representatives of these 
very classes into pure and saintly character. 
Neither history nor philosophy any longer ne- 
glects nor scorns to give candid attention to 
this class of phenomena. 



124 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 

Gibbon's prepossessions were not favorable 
to Christianity. We are hardly prepared to 
expect from him fair treatment for even the 
Christian name. But prejudiced historian 
though he was, he says, "The primitive Chris- 
tian demonstrated his faith by his virtues." 
Speaking of the emperor, Constantine, he says: 
"Under the manifest inadequacy of pagan 
philosophy to reform the morals of the people, 
he might observe with pleasure the progress of 
a religion which diffused among the people 
a pure, benevolent, and universal system of 
ethics, adapted to every duty and every con- 
dition of life; recommended as the will and 
reason of the supreme Deity, and enforced by 
the sanction of eternal rewards and punish- 
ments." 

Lecky, the famous historian of European 
morals, says: 

There can indeed be little doubt that, for nearly 
two hundred years after its establishment in Europe, 
the Christian community exhibited a moral purity 
which, if it has been equaled, has never for any 
long period been surpassed. Completely separated 
from the Roman world that was around them, 
abstaining alike from political life, from appeals 
to the tribunals, and from military occupations, 
looking forward continually to the immediate ad- 
vent of their Master, and to the destruction of the 
empire in which they dwelt, and animated by all 
the fervor of a young religion, the Christians found 



CHRISTIAN CHARACTER 125 

within themselves a whole order of ideas and feel- 
ings sufficiently powerful to guard them from the 
contamination of their age. 

Doctor T. R. Glover, in his great work The 
Conflict of Religions in the Early Roman 
Empire, declares of the early Christians: 

They were astonishingly upright, pure, and hon- 
est; they were serious; and they had in themselves 
inexplicable reserves of moral force and a happiness 
far beyond anything that the world knew. They 
were transfigured, as they owned. Some would 
confess to wasted and evil lives, but something 
had happened, which they connected with Jesus, 
or a Holy Spirit, but everything in the long run 
turned upon Jesus. . . . That Christianity retained 
its own character in the face of the most desperate 
efforts of its friends to turn it into a philosophy 
congenial to the philosophies of the day was the 
result of the strong hold it had taken upon innu- 
merable simple people, who had found in it the 
power of God in the transformation of their own 
characters and instincts, and who clung to Jesus 
Christ, to the great objective facts of his incarna- 
tion and his death upon the cross, as the firm founda- 
tion laid in the rock against which the floods of 
theory might beat in vain. 

William James, clear-headed and cool-hearted 
as a philosopher, thought it worth his while 
to give distinct and exhaustive study to this 
very field. He certainly cannot be charged 
with any special leaning to "evangelical ortho- 
doxy," nor with overbias toward traditional 



126 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 

creeds. It is all the more interesting to note 
his open-minded and high valuation of the 
facts of Christian conversion. However seareh- 
ingly he may have traced the psychology of 
the process, he does not deny the divineness 
of its cause, nor its permanent values for 
character and life. He has gathered many 
remarkable instances of Christian conversion. 
From these, I cite one, not simply because 
of its typical character, but especially for the 
reason that its subject came somewhat inti- 
mately under my own observation. The 
experience of Mr. S. H. Hadley is related as 
follows: 

One Tuesday evening I sat in a saloon in Harlem, 
a homeless, a friendless, dying drunkard. I had 
pawned or sold everything that would bring a drink. 
I could not sleep unless I was dead drunk. I had 
not eaten for days, and for four nights preceding 
I had suffered with delirium tremens, or the hor- 
rors, from midnight till morning. I had often said: 
"I will never be a tramp. I will never be cornered, 
for when that time comes, if it ever comes, I will 
find a home in the bottom of the river." As I sat 
thinking I seemed to feel some great and mighty 
presence. I did not know then what it was. I did 
learn afterward that it was Jesus, the sinner's 
friend. I walked up to the bar and pounded it 
with my fist till I made the glasses rattle. Those 
who stood by drinking looked on with scornful 
curiosity. I said I would never take another drink, 
if I died on the street, and really I felt as though 
that would happen before morning. Something 



CHRISTIAN CHARACTER 127 

said, "If you want to keep this promise, go and 
have yourself locked up." I went to the nearest 
station house and had myself locked up. 

I was placed in a narrow cell, and it seemed as 
though all the demons that could find room came 
in that place with me. This was not all the com- 
pany I had either. No, praise the Lord; that dear 
Spirit that came to me in the saloon was present 
and said, "Pray." I did pray, and though I did 
not feel any great help, I kept on praying. As 
soon as I was able to leave my cell I was taken 
to the police court and remanded back to the cell. 
I was finally released, and found my way to my 
brother's house, where every care was given me. 
While lying in bed the admonishing Spirit never 
left me, and when I arose the following Sabbath 
morning I felt that day would decide my fate, 
and toward evening it came into my head to go to 
Jerry McAuley 's Mission. I went. The house 
was packed, and with great difficulty I made my 
way to the space near the platform. There I saw 
the apostle to the drunkard and the outcast — 
that man of God, Jerry McAuley. He rose, and 
amid deep silence told his experience. There was 
a sincerity about this man that carried conviction 
with it, and I found myself saying, "I wonder if 
God can save me?" I listened to the testimony 
of twenty -five or thirty persons, every one of whom 
had been saved from rum, and I made up my 
mind that I would be saved or die right there. 
When the invitation was given, I knelt down with 
a crowd of drunkards. Jerry made the first prayer. 
Then Mrs. McAuley prayed fervently for us. O, 
what a conflict was going on for my poor soul! 
A blessed whisper said, "Come"; the devil said, 
"Be careful." I halted but for a moment, and 
then, with a breaking heart, I said, "Dear Jesus, 



128 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 

can you help me?" Never with mortal tongue can 
I describe that moment. Although up to that 
moment my soul had been filled with indescribable 
gloom, I felt the glorious brightness of the noonday 
sun shine into my heart. I felt I was a free man. 

the precious feeling of safety, of freedom, of 
resting on Jesus! I felt that Christ with all his 
brightness and power had come into my life; that, 
indeed, old things had passed away and all things 
had become new. 

From that moment till now I have never wanted 
a drink of whisky, and I have never seen money 
enough to make me take one. I promised God 
that night that if he would take away my appetite 
for strong drink, I would work for him all my life. 
He has done his part, and I have been trying to 
do mine. 

This is a very wonderful narrative. But 
from years of observation of Samuel H. Hadley, 

1 can personally testify to the fact that he 
lived a pure and highly useful Christian life, 
dying at last in the most vivid triumphs of 
the Christian faith. 

Harold Begbie, in his Twice Born Men, a 
book which has had a multitude of readers, 
gives a photographic description of several 
equally striking cases. Browning, in Ned 
Bratts, has invested such a biography with 
his own poetic genius. The foregoing citations 
from the general fields of history and philos- 
ophy are sufficient to indicate something of 
the impression which the demonstrated power 



CHRISTIAN CHARACTER 129 

of Christianity to transform and to morally 
uplift human character has made upon the 
great reviewers of the world's deeds and 
thought. Before, however, taking leave of the 
definite, and exceedingly important and fruit- 
ful, subject of this chapter, it will be profitable 
for us briefly to review some of the larger 
fields in the history of modern Christianity. 

The character-product attributable alone to 
the indwelling of God's Spirit in the human 
soul has been a distinct, rich, and continuous 
phenomenon in all the Christian ages. History 
fairly stated seems not more definitely to 
testify to anything than to the fact that Chris- 
tian character is a product of God's indwelling 
and in working Spirit in the soul of man. To 
deny this would be to leave the regenerative 
work of Christianity an outstanding enigma. 
To deny this would be to classify Christianity 
itself as a superfluous thing in the world's 
history. To deny this would be, in the light 
of the obvious and gravest moral needs of 
the race, to shut away from human view any 
just ground of hope for a regenerated and 
transformed spiritual future. 

In all periods of its highest life, and of its 
most signal moral conquests, the Church has 
most emphasized the doctrine and experience 
of the Spirit in the life of the believer. In 



130 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 

the first two and a half centuries it was not 
formulated creed, not ecclesiastical organiza- 
tion, not political cohesion, but the witnessing 
and testifying life of the Spirit that fed and 
fanned the quenchless fires of the faith. As 
has been emphasized, the Church of this 
period faced the concentrated scorn and ridicule 
of the world; its appointed and unavoidable 
path lay through an inferno of persecution 
and martyrdom, the very story of which has 
appalled the heart of subsequent ages. Yet 
the spirit of this Church was invincible, and 
its storm-swept path is signalized and made 
illustrious by the great saints and confessors 
who form an unbroken succession in its history. 
The period of the Reformation is distinctly 
luminous by its insistence upon the presence 
and work of the Spirit in the lives of men. 
In our casual reflections upon this great period 
a few names, such as Wycliffe, Huss, Calvin, 
Zwingli, and Knox, naturally occupy the fore- 
ground of our thought, and perhaps to the 
exclusion of a multitude of lesser characters 
who wrought vitally in this world-crisis. The 
Reformers, the Reformation itself, were gravely 
handicapped by dogmas and traditions which 
centuries of ecclesiastical domination had im- 
posed upon human thought. The Reformation, 
however great and beneficent in itself, left 



CHRISTIAN CHARACTER 131 

in popular belief large areas of error from 
which the Christian thinking of future ages 
alone could work complete emancipation. The 
Reformation is not to be belittled. It was 
an epoch in which the moral levels of the 
world were visibly raised. It was a great 
emergence in which large sections of the Chris- 
tian Church left behind them Egyptian bond- 
age, and went forth into territories of new 
intellectual and spiritual liberty, territories rich 
in the prophecy of a new progress for man- 
kind. 

But the one great discovery of the Reforma- 
tion, the one thing which gave it chief sig- 
nificance, was its proclamation of the Divine 
Spirit in his relations to the life of the indi- 
vidual soul. Luther himself, like many of the 
greatest spiritual teachers, was lifted to a new 
level and to a new vision, by what for his 
whole after-career was an epoch-making spir- 
itual revelation. As a typical confession of 
his faith he once wrote: "No man can under- 
stand God or God's Word unless he has it 
revealed immediately by the Holy Ghost; but 
nobody can receive anything from the Holy 
Ghost unless he experience it. In experience 
the Holy Ghost teaches us in his own school, 
outside of which nothing of value can be 
learned." 



132 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 

In relation to the distinctive doctrines and 
experiences of the Spirit, no single movement 
is perhaps more instructive than that of 
Methodism. John Wesley, the recognized 
founder and leader of the Methodist move- 
ment, was highly educated, strictly moral, 
conscientiously religious. In type his mind 
was highly philosophical. John Snaith has 
said of Wesley: 

In some respects he was much superior to Hegel, 
in others he was much inferior. If Hegel and 
Wesley could have been blended into one person, 
such a person would have been near the stature 
of the apostle Paul. At any rate, it only requires 
the logical philosophy of the Spirit as unfolded by 
Hegel infused into that of Wesley, or Wesley's into 
that of Hegel, to have a philosophy of the Spirit 
as nearly perfect as possible. 

Yet, up to a given period, Wesley was 
almost entirely lacking in that definite power 
which afterward transformed him into the peer- 
less evangelist of the Christian ages. After 
long and, what appeared to be, fruitless en- 
deavor, he was one day startled by the direct 
question, ''Does the Spirit of God bear witness 
with your spirit that you are a child of God?" 
To this question he gave solicitous attention 
and study for about two years. Under what 
would appear very simple circumstances, as in 
a revealing flash, he suddenly felt his "heart 






CHRISTIAN CHARACTER 133 

strangely warmed." He says: "An assurance 
was given me, that He had taken away my 
sins, even mine, and saved me from the law 
of sin and death." This experience was epochal. 
It dated for John Wesley the beginnings of 
an evangelical career which ranks him hardly 
second to any of the great workers of the 
Christian Church. 

Wesley was now thirty-five years of age. 
He lived to the age of eighty-eight years. 
It is not too much to say that in the remaining 
fifty-three years he lived in a broad arena, 
and in the most open publicity, the life of a 
saint. He died the most noted man in England. 
He was revered, honored, and loved as no 
other man of his day. The great emphasis 
of his religious teaching was upon the regen- 
erating and witnessing mission of the Holy 
Spirit in the soul of the believer. He was the 
chief leader and organizer of a great spiritual 
movement. To-day, to say nothing of the 
generations of Methodists dead, many millions 
of living witnesses are enrolled in those dis- 
tinctive communions of which he is the recog- 
nized founder. As in all large aggregations of 
human nature, Methodism in parts may have 
been characterized by limitations, weaknesses, 
and faults. But, in the sum of its life, covering 
a period of more than one hundred and seventy- 



134 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 

five years, it has furnished to the world a 
great army of exemplary Christian lives, and 
has increased the calendar of saints by many 
names worthy of the best traditions of the 
apostolic age. The soundness of the spiritual 
interpretation of such regenerative movements 
as were led by Wesley is sufficiently evidenced 
by the fact that they never arise save under 
the dynamic of high spiritual inspirations. 
Such movements can be accounted for only 
by the incoming of the Spirit of Pentecost upon 
the lives and hearts of the community. 

In connection with any sane and safe teach- 
ing concerning the Spirit's transforming and 
character-forming mission, there are several 
facts to be guarded and emphasized: 

First. It would be a one-sided and essen- 
tially false view to lay a chief stress upon the 
power and value of Christianity as simply 
the transformation and the making of good 
characters out of bad and apparently aban- 
doned men. Origen long ago declared that 
the greater number of those found in the 
churches are "converted from a not very 
wicked life," rather than from those "who 
have committed the most abominable sins. 5 ' 
Timothy, Paul's "beloved son in the gospel," 
was from infancy responsive to the highest 
moral influences. The prevailing fact is that 



CHRISTIAN CHARACTER 135 

among the really most valuable Christian 
characters — the men and the women most 
firmly grounded in the faith, most deeply ex- 
perienced in spiritual things, in whose lives 
there are most perfectly developed the Chris- 
tian graces, and who are the most radiant 
examples of settled trustfulness of soul, peace 
of mind, and of Christian fruitfulness, qualities 
which best attest the rule of the Spirit over 
the life — a great majority of all these have 
not come from the ranks of outbroken sinful- 
ness, but are to be numbered among those who 
from earliest life have been reared in a healthy 
moral and social environment. I can have no 
doubt that goodness in any life is a Spirit- 
nurtured growth. The fruits of the spiritual 
heritage are of wide distribution. It would 
be a moral tragedy of society were this not 
the fact. Any child born and reared in Chris- 
tian atmospheres must, by virtue of this very 
fact, be forever different in character and 
quality from what would be possible in the 
absence of such environment. Lives are made 
better or worse by virtue of good inheritances. 
If the heir of such inheritances willfully sins 
against his birthright, his perversion of char- 
acter thereby becomes the more treasonable 
and tragic. On the other hand, in the measure 
in which his life conforms to the better ideals 



136 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 

of his inheritance, by so much is he worthy 
of approbation. When a mere lad, with as 
yet no developed ability to think my way 
discriminatingly through the subject, I was 
mentally disturbed by a statement more than 
once made by zealous circuit-riding pastors, to 
the effect that a man of moral life was a far 
greater obstacle to the Kingdom than an 
outbreaking sinner. This kind of teaching 
seemed to me, even then, like putting a pre- 
mium upon a bad life. Such teaching is a 
moral heresy. Its assumption is thoroughly 
unethical. The man who from elect motives 
leads an upright life is far nearer the kingdom 
of God than is at all possible to the profane 
and abandoned sinner. Men of high motives 
should be a common heritage to the Chris- 
tian community. Children trained in Christian 
homes should by reason of that very fact be 
the most valuable recruits of the Church. 

Second. To justly judge the validity of a 
work of grace in the life of the individual, due 
regard must be had to several features, such 
as environment, habit, temperament, mental 
and moral capacity, of the person concerned. 
There are some characters in whom, when 
apparently divine grace has wrought at its 
best, there still inhere rugged and uncouth 
characteristics which seem inborn in the indi- 



CHRISTIAN CHARACTER 137 

vidual. It does not follow that some lives 
in which have really been wrought miracles 
of grace will appear more, or even as, perfect 
outwardly as do some other lives which seem 
to have been quite fully shaped by natural 
inheritance, temperament, or acquired culture. 
Apropos to this subject, James makes a quo- 
tation from Emerson and then makes his own 
rejoinder. Emerson says: "When we see a 
soul whose acts are regal, graceful, and pleasant 
as roses, we must thank God that such things 
can be and are, and not turn sourly on the 
angel and say: 'Crump is a better man, with 
his grunting resistance to all his native devils.' '' 
"True enough," says James, "yet Crump may 
really be the better Crump, for his inner dis- 
cords and second birth; and your once-born 
'regal' character, though, indeed, always better 
than poor Crump, may fall far short of what 
he individually might be had he only some 
Crump-like capacity for compunction over his 
own peculiar diabolisms, graceful and pleasant 
and invariably gentlemanly as these may be." 
The transforming grace of the Spirit, however 
deep or wonderful its work in the soul, never 
utterly obliterates or transcends the native 
lines or limitations of individuality. Some 
men have great capacity, large culture, and 
fine harmony of temperament. The Spirit 



138 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 

harmonizes with these qualities, beautifies them, 
and lifts them into their best expression. An- 
other person is not built on this scale. He 
may suffer not only from natural limitations, 
but from defects of habit. Even divine grace 
can work only on such foundations as it finds 
in the individual. But when the man of one 
talent, and of crippling limitations, is saved, 
he is saved for all he is worth. He is saved 
with a great salvation. To him his spiritual 
conversion will always remain the greatest 
fact in his moral history. 

Third. In assessing the values of Christian 
experience it is to be remembered that not all 
subjects have a uniform, or a like phenomenal, 
experience either in conversion or in the after 
developments of character. As a matter of 
observation, men seemingly come into the 
Christian life under a great variety and di- 
versity of phenomenal expression. We have 
already seen that this presents no real ground 
of difficulty. The religious motive appeals to 
the deepest life, and is from its very nature 
adapted, when in full action, to stir profoundly 
the emotions. 

This motive, when it has a clear hearing, 
makes imperious demands upon the entire 
personality. It is not strange that in the 
hour of crisis it should prove an agitating 



CHRISTIAN CHARACTER 139 

presence in the entire field of consciousness. 
But this emotional action will be far more 
pronounced in some cases than in others. The 
phenomenal expression will depend much upon 
the native temperament and aptitudes of the 
individual. In some natures the emotions will 
voice themselves like the breaking forth of a 
pent tide. In other cases the calm will and 
the introspective interrogation will hold emo- 
tion in abeyance, and, whatever happens, 
even though the processes of profound moral 
change are going on in the soul, the movement 
is quiet and wanting in outward, or phenom- 
enal, expression. It has taken many spiritual 
workers a long time — and even now the lesson 
is not well learned — to make due discrimination 
between what may be only phenomenal and 
that which is vitally essential in spiritual con- 
version. The essential thing is that the soul 
be in the attitude, and without reservation, of 
complete self-surrender to the sway of the 
Spirit. It cannot even reach this attitude 
without the preliminary aids of the Spirit 
himself. Rut when this condition is realized, 
the seeking, the soliciting, Spirit enters the 
life to work the most momentous moral events 
in the soul. This is the supreme thing. Are 
the emotions stirred? This is normal. But 
if, without emotion, there is the quiet discern- 



140 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 

ment of dawn, the touch of a new springtime, 
the sensing of a new moral life, in the soul; 
this too is normal. 

Ignorance of spiritual laws has led to much 
infelicity of spiritual teaching, amounting often 
to a quackery of method, in the insistence 
that a certain type of emotional experience is 
essential as evidence of Christian conversion. 
Great numbers of the best Christians have 
been needlessly troubled at this point. In- 
sistence upon this standard or criterion of 
entrance upon the Christian life, has amounted 
in many cases to an infliction of cruelty upon 
most sincere seekers after the true way. A 
true psychology must declare this sort of 
teaching, so far as professional aptitude is 
concerned, as discreditable as maladroit sur- 
gery. 

The emphasis of the Christian life is to be 
put upon its ethical quality. The real Chris- 
tian is one who is obedient to Jesus Christ. 
He is a doer rather than a feeler. It was 
Christ's meat and drink to do the will of his 
Father in heaven. In his final valuation of 
his followers it is the doer of God's will whom 
he approves. Christ would not leave Peter 
in the reverie of a transfiguration, but took 
him down into the valley where devils were 
to be cast out of men. Whatever be the emo- 



CHRISTIAN CHARACTER 141 

tional register, whether sustained excitement is 
present or absent, the man who has accepted 
the mastery of Jesus Christ, is one in whom 
the Divine Spirit is developing the fruits of 
righteousness. There will reign in his soul 
the serenity of a man at peace with God. The 
real need is the mind which was in Jesus Christ. 
If one have this mind, and practice it, the 
religious emotions may safely be left to take 
care of themselves. This man, as by an un- 
failing gravitation, is borne ever forward toward 
a perfecting Christian character. 

Fourth. The testimony of Christian charac- 
ter, as that also of experience, attains its 
highest evidential values, not from sporadic 
individual cases, but from the massed con- 
sensus of the Christian life. Christianity is 
historic. Its Kingdom has had a continuous 
and increasing growth through the centuries. 
Its citizenship, with an unbroken continuity 
of thought and expression, has, through all 
ages, spoken in one spiritual language. The 
Christian inspirations have uttered themselves 
among all races and in all generations, begetting 
everywhere in human hearts and characters 
the same moral response. The songs of Chris- 
tian experience have, the races over and the 
ages through, voiced themselves as in the 
harmonies of a universal symphony. Mingled 



142 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 

with the individual consciousness, now and 
then, there may have arisen phenomena both 
illusory and worthless. But, when all allowance 
is made for ephemeral and dreamlike illusions 
of the occasional individual, these will not be 
found to impair in the least either the sig- 
nificance or the value of the universal Christian 
experience and testimony. As to the significance 
of these there can be no ignoring and no mis- 
understanding. 

The phenomena of the Christian experience, 
and the distinctiveness of the Christian charac- 
ter, are too cosmic to admit of either historic 
or philosophic denial. In this relation, the 
central and dominating fact to be emphasized 
is that the religious consciousness of Jesus 
Christ is the regulative norm of Christian 
consciousness for all ages and for all peoples. 
The Christianity of Christ is historically and 
abundantly demonstrated to be morally cre- 
ative, transforming, uplifting, altruistic, hope- 
inspiring, as no other, and not all other, re- 
ligious faiths. Christianity, therefore, carries 
in itself the prophecy and the pledge of its uni- 
versality. The future moral perfection of 
mankind is to be realized only by the final 
dominance in civilization of the Christian 
character. 

Fifth. We must not confound the psychology 



CHRISTIAN CHARACTER 143 

of religious experience with the ultimate Cause 
and Source of this experience. Psychology has 
profoundly searched the phenomena accom- 
panying Christian conversion and the subse- 
quent development of Christian character, and 
has reached valid analyses and assessments of 
these phenomena. But this is no more to 
say that psychology actually accounts for, or 
does away with the necessity of, the distinctive 
divine causality and action in Christian con- 
version than that the botanist who classifies 
plants and analyzes their structures thereby 
explains the vital principle of their develop- 
ment. Psychology is a great clarifier of knowl- 
edge. It exposes delusions and eliminates false 
factors of faith. It reduces the processes of 
experience on their human side to rational 
clearness and credibility. It so philosophically 
illuminates our emotional experiences as to 
leave no intelligent excuse for either juggling 
with, or giving false interpretation to, these 
experiences. God has given to the human soul 
its distinct constitution. If the soul is a harp, 
God's play upon this instrument must move 
within the limits of its laws. It is the legit- 
imate function of psychology to study and to 
know the laws and possibilities of the instru- 
ment. But when the great Player brings 
forth the harmonies of celestial music, psy- 



144 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 

chology has no right to forget that the Player 
is God. 1 



1 The mode of treatment in this chapter has developed a 
considerable variety of statement. To facilitate review, I 
have thought it well to indicate the topics of the chapter in 
the order of their treatment, as follows: 

(1) The term "character," its historic significance. 
(2) Christian character the result of a Divine process in the 
soul. (3) Biblical ideals of character. (4) The general an- 
swer of history as to the validity of these ideals. (5) Chris- 
tians were persecuted because of their exceptional morals. 
(6) Both historian and philosopher now freely acknowledge 
the validity of both the Christian conversion and the Chris- 
tian character. (7) Testimony of great spiritual periods in 
the Church, such as the Reformation and the Wesleyan 
Revival. (8) In a measured survey of the phenomena of 
Christian conversion and the subsequent development of 
Christian character, several important facts need to be care- 
fully guarded and duly emphasized: 

(a) It would not only be an inadequate, but a thoroughly 
false, view to confine the morally transforming and uplifting 
power of Christianity to simply bad characters. 

(b) In the attempt to measure the apparent effects of 
divine grace upon character, due regard must be had to the 
qualities of the individual concerned: such as his heredity, 
temperament, habit, mental and moral capacity, etc. 

(c) Not all subjects of Christian conversion have a uni- 
form, or a like phenomenal, experience. Emotional phe- 
nomena furnish no valid criterion as to the genuineness of a 
work of grace in character. 

(d) The testimony of the individual may not necessarily 
be accepted as a final authority for the spiritual life. The 
value of such testimony must finally be measured by its 
agreement or disagreement with the general consensus of 
Christian experience. 

(e) While it is the proper function of psychology to inves- 
tigate and assess the mental and emotional processes at- 
tendant upon Christian experience, psychology, in no sense, 
either substitutes or accounts for the Cause and Source of 
Christian experience itself. 



VI 
SPIRITUAL FRUITS 



But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuf- 
fering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance: 
against such there is no law. — Galatians 5. 22, 23. 

We ourselves have observed crowded together in one day, 
some suffering decapitation, some of the torments of flames; 
so that the murderous weapon was completely blunted, and 
the executioners themselves, wearied with slaughter, were 
obliged to relieve one another. Then we were witnesses of 
the truly divine energy of those that believed in the Christ 
of God. They received the final sentence of death with 
gladness and exultation, so far as even to sing and to send 
up hymns of praise and thanksgiving until they breathed 
their last. — Eusebius. 

Joy is more conspicuous in Christianity than in any other 
religion, and in the Bible than in any other literature. 
Psychologically, joy is the index of health, resulting from 
the adequate engagement and the vigorous and harmonious 
exercise of the powers; it is the sign that the soul has found 
its object. — Dr. O. O. Findlay. 

One of the last places in the world to be regarded as a 
holiday resort was surely the noisome den at Bedford in 
which Bunyan was confined. But there was rarest holiday- 
making within. Not in king's palace, nor amid the noblest 
scenery of our isles, was there such exultation of soul, such 
vision of beauty, such sense of life and freedom as filled the 
soul of the lonely prisoner as there rose before him in his 
dungeon the successive scenes of that great conception which 
was to make him immortal. To stand on the Delectable 
Mountains was better than to climb the Jungfrau. Great- 
heart, Christian, and Faithful formed finer society than the 
wits of the coffee-houses. To have looked through the gates 
of the New Jerusalem made cheap the splendors of Paris or 
Rome. — /. Brierley. 

With an eye made quiet by the power 
Of harmony, and the deep power of joy, 
We see into the life of things. 

— Wordsworth, 



CHAPTER VI 

SPIRITUAL FRUITS 

The Gospel, as announced by the angel 
messengers, was a heralding of "Glad tidings 
of great joy." Joy is one of the designated 
fruits of the Spirit. Joy and fortitude are not 
synonyms. But the qualities which they ex- 
press keep close company with each other. 
Joy and fortitude are alike direct products of 
Christian grace. Saint Paul was a man of 
superb fortitude. He was equally the apostle 
of joy. Few pictures are more impressive than 
that of Paul in prison voicing in his letter to 
the Philippians the notes of highest joy, and 
at the same time calmly, heroically, awaiting 
his own death at the hands of the executioner. 
A treatise of unique character, yet most rich 
in substance, is furnished in the writings of 
the New Testament on the subject of Christian 
joy. In numerous passages, and representing 
a great variety of conditions, there is pictured 
the rise of this joy in the heart. This is em- 
phasized especially of those who have come 
newly into the consciousness of spiritual 
discipleship. 

147 



148 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 

Christ, foretelling this state, declares that 
"the kingdom of heaven is like unto treasure 
hid in a field; the which when a man hath 
found, he hideth, and for joy thereof goeth 
and selleth all that he hath, and buyeth that 
field/' A scene following the Pentecostal re- 
vival represents the converts as meeting daily 
with one accord in the temple, breaking bread 
from house to house, and eating their meal 
with gladness and singleness of heart. The 
Thessalonian Christians, though in much afflic- 
tion, received the word with joy of the Holy 
Ghost. Love, joy, and peace are pictured as 
inseparable graces wrought by the Spirit in 
the life of the believer. But hardly, if any, 
less emphasis is placed in the New Testament 
on the spirit of heroic fortitude which char- 
acterized the subjects of the Christian life. 
The path of the early Christian was not easy. 
He had to endure hardness as a true soldier 
of Jesus Christ. The scene of Paul and Silas 
at Philippi, arrested, scourged in the market- 
place, their backs lacerated by the thongs, 
thrust into prison, their feet made fast in the 
stocks, and yet at midnight singing praises 
unto God, is one to challenge the vision of an 
artist. Saint Peter, addressing certain Chris- 
tians in a period of tribulation, a period that 
tried their faith so as by fire, speaks of the 



SPIRITUAL FRUITS 149 

constancy of their faith in Jesus Christ, "Whom 
having not seen," he says, "ye love; in whom, 
though now ye see him not, yet believing, ye 
rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory." 
Thus it would seem that joy and fortitude, 
with the entire company of kindred graces, 
held triumphant place in the hearts of these 
early New Testament Christians. 

If, however, we were confined to the early 
Church for signal experiences in the Christian 
life of the high graces of joy, fortitude, faith, 
hope, we might be forced to conclude that 
Christianity itself was little more than a pass- 
ing phenomenon in the world's history. Chris- 
tian experience in every age has abundantly 
evidenced, and, it may be measuredly said, in 
a way nowhere else known, those invincible 
qualities of soul which are classed as the dis- 
tinctive fruits of the Spirit. 

As for fortitude, aside from the inspirations 
of some lofty religious faith, it was perhaps 
never more perfectly displayed than by the 
ancient Stoics. The school of Stoicism, founded 
by Zeno near the close of the fourth century 
B. C, wielded great influence in the classical 
world, for several hundred years. This school, 
while pagan in character, enjoined a high 
morality. It developed a somewhat distinctive 
and lofty conception of God, but was essen- 



150 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 

tially fatalistic in its philosophy. It enrolled 
among its adherents large numbers of reflective 
minds who felt the need of acquiring a philo- 
sophic calm in the midst of nature's inexorable 
environment. In a world where "Nature is 
red in tooth and claw/ 5 and where, at best, 
man is but the sport of the fates, himself 
weak and helpless in the presence of the in- 
evitable, it was felt to be of religious value 
that he should secure for himself a brave, 
calm, enduring, and resigned spirit. It was 
a saying of Marcus Aurelius: "Either the gods 
have no power, or they have power. If they 
have not, why pray? If they have, why not 
pray for deliverance from the fear, or the 
desire, or the pain, which the thing causes, 
rather than for the withholding or the giving 
of the particular thing? For certainly, if they 
can cooperate with men, it is for these very 
purposes they can cooperate.' 9 

In the days of the later Stoicism, among 
its most illustrious representatives in Rome 
were Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius. 
Seneca was a foremost philosopher; Epictetus 
was born a slave, but a genius; Marcus Aurelius 
was emperor. These men reached the highest 
levels of natural morality and heroism. They 
developed many traits and ideals of character 
which must forever be outstanding in the 



SPIRITUAL FRUITS 151 

Christian life. It is interesting in this con- 
nection to note that Bishop Bashford, in his 
recent great work on China, classes Marcus 
Aurelius and Epictetus along with Moses, 
Isaiah, and Jeremiah, as men each of whom, 
perhaps unwittingly but no less really, accepted 
his cross and followed the light which God 
gave him. However, it must be said of 
Stoicism, even at its best, that it never reached 
the high moral plane of the Christian faith. 
It never acquired the secret of that unyielding 
fortitude which has borne multitudes of humble 
Christians in buoyant triumph along the 
gauntleted path of most inconceivably dread- 
ful and tragic experiences. Stoicism at its 
highest level always made room for suicide 
as a door of retreat from seemingly unendur- 
able ills. This was the door through which 
Seneca finally elected exit from the sorrows 
of his own existence. The Christian ideal 
has never for one moment tolerated this method 
of retreat. Stoicism, whatever its attainment 
of philosophic calm, was never joyful, never 
exuberant, in spirit. If Stoicism was a re- 
ligion, it did not voice itself in song. It has 
been said that "Epictetus announces a hymn 
to Zeus, but he never starts the tune." 

There has, upon the other hand, been no 
period of stress, however dire, in Christian 



152 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 

history which was not efflorescent with tri- 
umphant song. The Christians, even in perse- 
cution, were the happiest people of their day. 
The insufficiency of the most perfect fortitude 
of Stoicism as contrasted with the Christian 
type is clearly recognized and pointed out by 
William James. He says: "Occasionally, it is 
true, the Stoic rises to something like a Chris- 
tian warmth of sentiment, as in the often 
quoted passage from Marcus Aurelius: 

"Everything harmonizes with me which is har- 
monious to thee, O Universe. Nothing for me is 
too early or too late, which is in due time for thee. 
Everything is fruit to me which thy seasons bring, 
O Nature: from thee are all things, in thee are all 
things, to thee all things return. The poet says, 
Dear City of Cecrops; and wilt thou not say, Dear 
City of Zeus? 

But compare even as devout a passage as this 
with a genuine Christian outpouring, and it 
seems a little cold. Turn, for instance, to the 
Imitation of Christ: 

"Lord, thou knowest what is best; let this or that 
be as thou wilt. Give what thou wilt, so much as 
thou wilt, when thou wilt. Do with me as thou 
knowest best, and as shall be most to thine honor. 
Place me where thou wilt, and freely work thy 
will with me in all things. . . . when could it be 
evil when thou art near? I had rather be poor 
for thy sake than rich without thee. I choose 
rather to be a pilgrim upon the earth with thee, 



SPIRITUAL FRUITS 153 

than without thee to possess heaven. Where thou 
art, there is heaven; and where thou art not, behold 
there death and hell." 

What the moralist endures by a tense effort 
of volition, the Christian easily spurns under 
the action of high religious emotion. "The 
moralist must hold his breath and keep his 
muscles tense; and so long as this athletic 
attitude is possible, all goes well — morality 
suffices. But the athletic attitude tends ever 
to break down, and it inevitably does break 
down even in the most stalwart when the 
organism begins to decay, or when morbid 
fears invade the mind. To suggest personal 
will and effort to one all sicklied o'er with a 
sense of irremediable impotence is to suggest 
the most impossible of things." 

"There is a state of mind known to religious 
men, but to no others, in which the will to 
assert ourselves and hold our own has been 
displaced by a willingness to close our mouths 
and be as nothing in the floods and water- 
spouts of God. In this state of mind what 
we most dreaded has become the habitation 
of our safety, and the hour of our moral death 
has turned into our spiritual birthday. The 
time for tension in our soul is over, and that 
of happy relaxation, of calm, deep breathing, 
of an eternal present, with no despondent 



154 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 

future to be anxious about, has arrived. Fear 
is not held in abeyance as it is in mere moral- 
ity. It is positively expunged and washed 
away." "Religious feeling is thus an absolute 
addition to the subject's range of life. It gives 
him a new sphere of power. When the out- 
ward battle is lost, and the outer world dis- 
owns him, it redeems and vivifies an interior 
world which otherwise would be an empty 
waste — this sort of happiness in the absolute 
and everlasting is what we find nowhere but 
in religion. ... If you ask how religion thus 
falls on the thorns and faces death, and in the 
very act annuls annihilation, I cannot explain 
the matter, for it is religion's secret, and to 
understand it you must yourself have been 
a religious man of the extremer type." 

Explain it as we may, a patient, buoyant, 
and exultant fortitude, a kind nowhere else 
fully matched, has characterized the highest 
Christian experiences in all the ages. The 
annals of martyrdom abound in instances 
where Christian fortitude has shown itself 
invincible and even joyous in the face of the 
most ingenious tortures and cruelties possible 
of infliction. When John Huss was bound to 
the stake, and the fagots were piled ready 
for the torch, the Duke of Bavaria exhorted 
him to be yet mindful of his salvation, and 



SPIRITUAL FRUITS 155 

renounce his errors. Huss replied: "What 
error should I renounce when I know myself 
guilty of none? For this was the principal 
end and purpose of my doctrine, that I might 
teach all repentance and remission of sins, 
according to the verity of the gospel of Jesus 
Christ: wherefore with a cheerful mind and 
courage I am here ready to suffer death." 

Ridley and Latimer were martyred together. 
When the lighted torch was laid at Ridley's 
feet, Latimer said: "Be of good comfort, Master 
Ridley, and play the man. We shall this day 
light such a candle, by God's grace, in England, 
as I trust shall never be put out." There is 
no need to multiply testimony from scenes of 
martyrdom. Those who have invincibly died 
for their faith are innumerable. They arise 
in history as a great cloud of witnesses. No 
type of martyrs ever displayed a more in- 
vincible fortitude than did the Chinese Chris- 
tians who within the memory of this generation 
perished in great numbers in the Boxer 
Rebellion. 

Miss Luella Miner, in her China's Book of 
Martyrs, relates instances of Christian heroism 
so thrilling as to stir the very blood: 

Mrs. Yang and her two little girls were captured 
by the Boxers and carried to a temple. She was 
urged to renounce her faith and worship the idols. 



156 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 

Upon her prompt refusal she and her helpless 
children were slain. A Chinese girl was commanded 
to burn incense to the gods. She refused, saying: 
"I cannot burn incense, for I believe in Jesus. I 
am not afraid, even though you kill me, for I shall 
go straight to my heavenly Father." Hardly had 
she ceased speaking before the sword descended. 
One of the preachers, Ch'en Ta-yung, with his 
wife and two children were hacked to pieces by the 
infuriated Boxers. The mother's last words were, 
"We will all go to our heavenly Father together." 1 

The voice of John Bunyan, even in Bedford 
jail, was insuppressible. He was offered his 
liberty if he would consent to cease preaching. 
His reply was: "Release me to-day, and I 
will preach to-morrow." John Nelson, one of 
Wesley's early helpers, was imprisoned in a 
horrible dungeon located under a slaughter pen. 
He says, "When I came into the dungeon, 
that stank worse than a hog-sty by reason of 
the blood and filth that ran into it from the 
butchers who killed over it, my soul was so 
filled with the love of God that it was a par- 
adise to me." John Woolman, the Indian 
missionary, tells us that one night, far away 
from tent or habitation, unable to kindle a 
fire because of the falling rain, he sat through 
the long hours under a bush and "found his 
soul filled with comfort as he meditated upon 

1 Modern Messages from Great Hymns, by Robert Elmer 
Smith, pp. 152-153. 



SPIRITUAL FRUITS 157 

God." Tertullian lived in the heated periods 
of Roman persecution. He not only witnessed 
many scenes of Christian martyrdom, but he 
lived under the constant menace of its inflic- 
tion upon himself. He was a brilliant lawyer, 
a rhetorician. His professional possibilities in 
civil life were brilliant. But he sacrificed his 
professional career, with all its promise, when 
he became a Christian. In times that tried 
men's souls, when the arena was red with 
martyrdom, when he could but know himself 
as a signal target for destruction, Tertullian 
walked his path of Christian duty with the 
loyalty and firmness of a soldier. 

In mentioning the soldier, I am reminded 
that Christian fortitude and the fortitude of 
the soldier are not necessarily from the same 
source. Nor, however akin, are they the same 
in their motives of manifestation. The forti- 
tude of the soldier may be most admirable. 
It has been exhibited on innumerable fields 
of most trying strife, and has held itself in 
bravest poise in defeat as well as in victory. 
Among the wonderful qualities of human nature 
which have come to transfiguring expression 
amid the maddening ravages of the present 
European war, none can be more wonderful 
than that fortitude which has held multitudes 
of soldiers in all the armies brave and firm 



158 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 

under conditions which would seem to defy 
all human endurance. Who shall say that 
patriotism is not a divine endowment? It is 
certainly the mother of heroisms that seem 
well-nigh preternatural. 

But Christian fortitude, whatever the orig- 
inal endowment, receives its reenforcements 
from moral sources. "Men have learned from 
Christ how to find joy in pain; how to be 
happy when suffering and dying." And so 
it has been a common expression of the saintly 
life that men have manifested a phenomenal 
fortitude, a spirit of patience and of cheerful 
endurance, amid what would appear the most 
forbidding allotments of life. The saint has 
shown a capacity for sublime cheerfulness, for 
unconquerable hope, even amid conditions of 
adversity and illness, of thwarted hopes, of 
defeated ambitions, of unjust imprisonments, 
on lonely and trying pathways of duty in the 
wilderness and in the desert — pathways that 
have been trodden by the world's superlative 
heroes, pathways of sacrificial service for hu- 
manity, pathways leading to dungeon portals, 
to the stake, to the world's Calvarys — these 
have all been beaten hard by pilgrims bent on 
holy quest, and whose fortitude has been in- 
breathed from sources higher than themselves. 

The Christian life, whatever its material 



SPIRITUAL FRUITS 159 

environment, is essentially a joyful life. Christ 
said to his disciples, "These things have I 
spoken unto you, that my joy might remain 
in you, and that your joy might be full." It 
is an observation of widest Christian experience 
that the soul newly born into the spiritual life 
seeks to give expression to its unutterable 
bliss in some note of praise. The inspirations 
of this new-found bliss have, all along the 
ages, voiced themselves in great hymns. 

Charles Wesley first entered into the con- 
scious and great peace of the believer on 
Whit Sunday, May 21, 1738. On the follow- 
ing Tuesday at nine in the morning, he began 
a hymn upon his conversion in which occurs 
the verse: 

how shall I the goodness tell, 

Father, which thou to me hast showed? 

That I, a child of wrath and hell, 
I should be called a child of God, 

Should know, should feel my sins forgiven, 

Blest with this antepast of heaven ! 

On the following day, John Wesley, having 
come into a like experience, was brought by 
a troop of friends to the room of his brother, 
where together they sang this hymn with 
great joy, and parted w^ith prayer. This 
hymn has been very properly designated as 
the "Birth-song of the Evangelical Revival." 



160 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 

Charles Wesley's spiritual joy was a perpetual 
glow in his soul. Under its inspirations he 
wrote a great wealth of hymns based on high- 
est spiritual experiences. I quote one more 
from his pen. It is hymn 311 in the Methodist 
Hymnal: 

O how happy are they, 

Who the Saviour obey, 
And have laid up their treasures above! 

Tongue can never express 

The sweet comfort and peace 
Of a soul in its earliest love. 



That sweet comfort was mine, 

When the favor divine 
I first found in the blood of the Lamb; 

When my heart first believed, 

What a joy I received, 
What a heaven in Jesus's name! 



'Twas a heaven below 

My Redeemer to know, 
And the angels could do nothing more, 

Than to fall at his feet, 

And the story repeat, 
And the Lover of sinners adore. 



Jesus all the day long 
Was my joy and my song, 

O that all his salvation might see! 
"He hath loved me," I cried, 
"He hath suffered and died, 

To redeem a poor rebel like me." 



SPIRITUAL FRUITS 161 

the rapturous height 
Of that holy delight 

Which I felt in the life-giving blood ! 
Of my Saviour possessed, 

1 was perfectly blessed, 

As if filled with the fulness of God. 

Philip Doddridge celebrated his own con- 
version in a hymn which will be long sung in 
the Church at large as expressing the new- 
found joy of the Christian convert. The 
opening verse ^nd the refrain of this hymn 
are as follows: 

O happy day, that fixed my choice 
On thee, my Saviour and my God! 

Well may this glowing heart rejoice, 
And tell its raptures all abroad. 
Happy day, happy day, 

When Jesus washed my sins away : 

He taught me how to watch and pray, 

And live rejoicing every day. 

Happy day, happy day, ^ 

When Jesus washed my sins away. 

Far more space than can be here afforded 
could easily be taken in quoting hymns of joy, of 
faith, of hope, of fortitude, of triumph, exultant 
hymns that will be sung as long as the Chris- 
tian ages last. The confident prophecies of 
Christian immortality have uttered themselves 
in the great hymns of the Church. When Dr. 
Ray Palmer lay dying, those who bent over 



162 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 

him heard him repeating the last verse of his 
own beautiful hymn: 

"When death these mortal eyes shall seal, 
And still this throbbing heart, 
The rending vail shall thee reveal, 
All-glorious as thou art." 

The great hymns evidence the continuous- 
ness of the divine inspirations in the human 
soul. They are the inspired transcriptions of 
God's revelations of himself to elect men who 
have pursued him to the very higher levels 
of the spiritual life. On mounts of transfigura- 
tion and of immortal vision, God is still speak- 
ing to his own. 

In this chapter joy and fortitude have been 
much dwelt upon as typical fruits of the Spirit. 
We must remember, however, that in the 
synthesis of the Christian life all the graces 
of the Spirit are of concurrent and mutually 
supportive function. Faith, Hope, Meekness, 
Temperance, whatsoever there is of Good Re- 
port, and whatsoever there is that is of Virtue 
— these all, in the symmetrical ministries of 
grace, blend in the interplay of the soul's life. 
Faith in the immortal and heavenly life has 
contributed vastly to the fortitude of the 
Christian believer. The amazing firmness of 
the early martyrs was attributed by Celsus 
and other pagan writers to what was termed 



SPIRITUAL FRUITS 163 

their "superstitious" belief in immortality. 
Christ himself taught that we are not to fear 
man, who, at his worst, can only destroy the 
body, but, rather, fear God, who can destroy 
both soul and body in hell. 

Much modern emphasis is laid upon the 
"eternal life" as a thing of quality rather than 
of duration. There is obviously a very vital 
emphasis to be laid upon the quality feature 
of the immortal life. But all true Christian 
teaching has always stressed this emphasis. 
Quality and endlessness have both been at 
the center of the Christian doctrine of immor- 
tality. Neither conception is complete without 
the other. The Christian, if in full possession 
of his faith, is one who habitually seeks in 
himself God-likeness. He lives also in this 
life as one who watchfully plans for an infinite 
and enduring future. In his thought the 
highest sanity calls for the subordination of 
present and fleeting interests to the enduring 
values of the endless life. In the most worthy 
sense of the term, a man could not be a Chris- 
tian and so live as to be forgetful of the vital 
relations which his present conduct may sus- 
tain to his unending destiny. If righteousness, 
truth, honesty, temperance, chastity, brotherly 
love, charity, sacrificial service for the love of 
God — if these, and kindred qualities, must 



164 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 

enter into a true preparation of character for 
the life to come, then, at the denial of all 
opposing things, one must plan, at whatever 
cost, and, if needs be, at the price of severest 
discipline and self-denial, to make himself 
rich in these qualities. The scheme of the 
Christian life, as that of no other life, calls 
for largest practical reckoning with the motives 
of eternity. These motives, if heeded, will 
put a man's feet upon the highest pathways 
for this present life. They will hold him to 
a balancing vision of things eternal. It was 
this vision which gave invincible courage to 
the Christian martyrs. It was this which 
enabled Saint Paul, in a career of incredible 
privation and suffering, to say: "For our light 
affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh 
for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight 
of glory." It is this vision which has steadied 
untold thousands in sickness, in poverty, in 
sorrow. They too have thought of the exceed- 
ing rewards of the heavenly life: and they 
have been patient, heroic, even joyful all 
along the difficult pathways of their earthly 
allotment. 

It may be that some, under the high stress 
of conviction, have too little prized the values 
of earthly good. A mistake is possible even 
in this direction. God intends the best things 



SPIRITUAL FRUITS 165 

of this world for his own people. "Godliness 
is profitable unto all things, having promise 
of the life that now is, and of that which is 
to come." This mistake, however if ever 
made, is not common. Professing Christians of 
the present age would seem far more in danger 
of being overcome by the world's passing 
allurements than they are to make the mistake 
of not placing proper values upon temporal 
good. A gold coin can be pressed so close 
as to shut the entire heavens from the vision 
of the eye. Christian faith is far-sighted. As 
the mariner guides his ship on trackless seas 
by the light of distant stars, so Christian 
destiny must be guided by the beacons of 
eternity. To-morrow we leave earth forever 
behind us. Then that which is before us, 
that alone, will be of supreme moment. Christ 
taught clearly the necessity of deliberate fore- 
cast, the necessity of building upon sure founda- 
tions, if men would enter into life. 



VII 
CHRISTIAN SERVICE 



The Spirit of the Lord Jehovah is upon me, 

Because Jehovah hath anointed me to proclaim glad tidings 

to the poor; 
He hath sent me to bind up the broken-hearted, 
To proclaim liberty to the captives, 
And the bursting of the prison to them that are bound; 
To proclaim the year of Jehovah's favor, 
And the day of vengeance of our God. 

If God could evolve man and civilization from a world 
of reptiles, surely it will be a lesser task to evolve an earthly 
paradise from the world that is. Man's measureless progress 
in the past is a pledge of future progress. 

"Till upon earth's grateful sod 
Rests the city of our God." 

— Dr. Josiah Strong. 

The future is lighted for us with the radiant colors of 
hope. Strife and sorrow shall disappear. Peace and love 
shall reign supreme. The dream of poets, the lesson of 
priest and prophet, the inspiration of the great musician, is 
confirmed in the light of modern knowledge; and, as we 
gird ourselves for the work of life we may look forward to 
the time when in the truest sense the kingdoms of this world 
shall become the kingdom of Christ, and he shall reign for- 
ever and ever, King of kings and Lord of lords. 

— Professor John Fiske. 

If the conception of the kingdom of God came to be the 
working faith of our modern world, every business man 
would confront the question whether his business as a total, 
in the goods it turns out and in the men it employs, is 
advancing or retarding the reign of God on earth. Our 
entire business system would be under the condemnation of 
religion until it was an institutionalized expression of the 
Christian law of mutual service. If our business men 
engaged in reorganizing business for that higher end, they 
could for the first time in history have the same ennobling 
sense of serving God which a minister, a teacher, or a 
mother may now have. They are now a disinherited class 
in religion. They have a religious sense of worth mainly 
when they are doing something for their church or their 
philanthropies outside of their business. The kingdom faith, 
once lodged in a man's mind, compels every man to become 
a redeemer, and his chief redemptive ministry is through 
his job. — Professor Walter Bauschenbusch. 



CHAPTER VII 

CHRISTIAN SERVICE 

Christianity means a measureless weal for 
humanity. Its wealth of inspiration and of 
ministry, so far from being exhausted, is as 
yet unexplored. The kingdom of Christ seems 
slow in asserting its rightful regnancy in the 
earth. Its practical dominion in civilization, 
like all great cosmic movements, is of seeming 
slow development. Its approach to that 

. . . one far-off divine event 

To which the whole creation moves 

is really apprehended only in the vision of 
the seer. To one who breathes only the sordid 
spirit of the world, who feels that he must 
be perpetually on guard against the aggressions 
of an unscrupulous and grasping selfishness, 
who perhaps in his own business has been 
hurt by a conscienceless and destructive com- 
petition, there comes the easy temptation to 
pessimism. He may lose faith in Christian 
goodness, because sorely tempted to believe 
that Christianity as a practical rule of life is 
a failure. It is to be feared that too many 

169 



170 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 

men, men of generally good purposes, are more 
or less victims of this vicious philosophy, 
This state of mind is unfortunate. It is mor- 
ally pitiable. It is a nether view, one im- 
measurably below the plane of healthy Christian 
inspirations. 

The Church itself has suffered great scandal 
from its own professed adherents whose con- 
duct has given too much justification for this 
view. There are men enrolled in church 
membership who attend worship, who give 
money for the support of Christian institu- 
tions, yet whose churchianity is no sure guaran- 
tee of their ethical soundness. They play one 
role in the church, and quite another in the 
market place. This kind of thing has occurred 
with sufficient frequency to furnish to the lips 
of the scoffer the cynical charge that "Chris- 
tianity is either a fraud, or it is played out." 
The spirit in which this charge is made is 
never admirable. The charge itself is no 
argument against Christianity. At worst, it 
only shows that there are either defective or 
false members in the formal enrollment of 
church membership, persons in whose hearts 
and lives the true Christian spirit has not 
come to enthronement. Christianity, as yet, is 
far from having come fully to its own in human 
society. 



CHRISTIAN SERVICE 171 

As a corrective of cheap and shallow pes- 
simism one needs to keep company with his- 
tory. With all the imperfections and shadows 
that darken the present civilizations, one 
cannot traverse the long backward vistas with- 
out discovering that humanity as a whole 
now stands on higher moral and spiritual 
levels, is in possession of vaster realms of 
intelligence, and is actuated by a nobler benev- 
olence, than was ever true of any preceding 
age. Certainly a great moral leaven is working 
in the forward-moving tides of history. In the 
so-called Christian civilizations, fine spiritual 
ideals were never so imperative, there never 
was such a wealth of organized education and 
benevolence, never so many agencies minister- 
ing to human weal as now. Let one take a 
survey of the pagan nations, and in them all 
map out the work of Christian missions, ac- 
quainting himself with the history of these 
missions, their history of heroic service and 
sacrifice, their transforming, ameliorating and 
uplifting ministries, the colonies of spiritual 
enlightenment which they have raised up in 
the dark places of the earth — and he must 
be callous and blind indeed if not impressed 
that some irresistible and beneficent Power is 
installing a program of righteousness for the 
entire world. It hardly need be said that the 



172 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 

highest existing moral standards, the most 
luminous education, the largest wealth of 
scientific acquisition, factors which prophesy 
the best future for humanity, are all more 
largely the creation of Christianity than of 
all other agencies. And in just the measure 
in which these forces are working most benef- 
icently they are to be found in closest company 
with the spirit and mission of the Christian 
Church. 

All men need to hear the prophetic voice. 
They need in some way to partake of the 
vision of the seer. Those by whom the voice 
is unheard and to whom at best the vision is 
dim, cannot escape the twilight territories of 
the spiritual life. For any clear and helpful 
understanding of what Christianity really is, 
for a just measurement of its place and achieve- 
ment in history, vision is needed. Christ is 
the incomprehensible and immeasurable char- 
acter of history. At first neglected, maltreated, 
crucified; later, the scorn of the philosopher, 
his people the subjects of contempt and ridicule, 
and finally made victims of fiercest persecution; 
yet, while institutions and nations have per- 
ished, Christ has not only persisted, but with 
an irresistible fascination he is more and more 
filling the thought of the world. In the later 
centuries, indeed, in these very later decades, 



CHRISTIAN SERVICE 173 

Christ, immeasurably more than any other 
historic character, has drawn to himself the 
most critical study of the philosophic and 
cultured world. His enemies, as in the great 
drives of modern armies, have hurled against 
him the most formidable attacks which the 
most consummately resourceful and hostile crit- 
icism could devise. It is conservative to say 
that no man not obviously divine, no cause 
not invincibly grounded in truth, could have 
received a tithe of the destructive hostility 
which has been directed against Jesus Christ, 
and survive. But, for some reason, Christ 
continues to live. All weapons forged for his 
destruction fall shattered at his feet. He 
emerges from every conspiracy formed against 
him with character unscathed. When the din 
of latest controversy has been silenced, and 
its confusions have cleared away, he stands 
forth more than ever radiant in the glories 
of divinity. 

The Church has been adversely criticized, 
and justly. Its purely human elements have 
often given it unchristlike expression. Many 
of its traditions, and some of its beliefs, have 
not been able to withstand the scrutiny of 
present-day thought, nor have they been found 
adapted to present-day needs. But not so 
Christ. In character, in example, in teaching, 



174 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 

in revelation, he always stands in advance of 
the age and of the world's needs. There is 
no evidence worthy of consideration which 
would lead us to believe that he himself is 
losing out in the world's thought. He was 
never so impressively divine before the vision 
of mankind as now. His sovereignty over the 
consciences of men is an ever- widening realm. 
So far as Christ is concerned, the book of 
revelation is not yet complete. The Holy 
Spirit by his inspirations is still taking of the 
things of Christ and showing them unto men. 
The Church has a larger vision of Christ to- 
day than was possible even to the apostolic 
age. Christ will continue to grow upon the 
world's thought, his sway will ever widen, 
until finally in universal acclaim he shall be 
hailed as Lord of lords and King of kings. 

I have entitled this chapter "Christian 
Service." This is a great theme. It is in 
the very nature of Christianity to inspire the 
spirit of service. A distinctive mark of Christ's 
activity was that "He went about doing good." 
He seemingly lost no opportunity to serve the 
needy. If the value of service is measured 
by sacrifice, then Christ paid the full price. 
His life was a continuous offering for the 
good of others. In the sense of self-indulgence 
he pleased not himself; but at all times — in 



CHRISTIAN SERVICE 175 

hunger, in weariness, in a perpetual divorce 
of his life from luxuries which minister to the 
sense — he literally poured out the wealth of 
his healing sympathy upon human needs. 

No man can receive the spirit of Christ 
without the prompting to do good. The first 
question asked by Saul of Tarsus, when smitten 
on his Damascus way, was: "What wilt thou 
have me to do?" His first impulse was to 
render some act of obedience, of service. From 
the day of his conversion to the day of his 
death he gave himself to prodigious toils. He 
exposed himself to untold peril, privation, and 
suffering, that he might serve those for whom 
Christ had died. No sooner was the Christian 
Church originated, than it was characterized 
by a new and distinctive spirit of charity, of 
benevolence, of well-doing toward all in want. 
One of its earliest organizations was a bureau 
of charities, with a choice of select, devout, 
and wise men for its administrators. 

It would be untrue to history to deny that 
there has always been present in society a 
spirit of altruism. Noble instances of a mutual 
helpfulness among men abound in pagan his- 
tory. It would be as false to deny the presence 
of mutual kindliness in the communities of all 
races as it would to deny that God's Spirit 
has been always and everywhere present to 



176 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 

quicken the moral life of man. A distinctive 
glory of Christianity is that it laid hold upon 
the native altruism of the human heart, and 
quickened it into a new and larger life, touch- 
ing it with the spirit of sacrifice, and ordain- 
ing it to new and high careers of service. And 
so, through all the centuries of its history, 
Christianity has been characterized by the 
noblest forms of service for human needs. To 
this general fact history gives varied and 
generous testimony. Lecky says: 

There can be no question that neither in practice 
nor in theory, neither in the institutions that were 
founded nor in the place that was assigned to it in 
the scale of duties, did charity in antiquity occupy 
a position at all comparable to that which has ob- 
tained by Christianity. . . . Christianity for the 
first time made charity a rudimentary virtue, giving 
it the foremost place in the moral type, and in the 
exhortations of its teachers. Besides its general 
influence in stimulating the affections, it effected a 
complete revolution in this sphere, by representing 
the poor as the special representatives of the Chris- 
tian Founder, and thus making the love of Christ 
rather than the love of man the principle of charity. 
Even in the days of persecution collections for the 
relief of the poor were made at the Sunday meetings. 
The Agapse, or feasts of love, were intended mainly 
for the poor, and food that was saved by the fasts 
was devoted to their benefit. A vast organization 
of charity, presided over by the bishops, and actively 
directed by the deacons, soon ramified over Chris- 
tendom, till the bond of charity became the bond of 
unity, and the most distant sections of the Christian 



CHRISTIAN SERVICE 177 

Church corresponded by the interchange of mercy. 
Long before the era of Constantine it was observed 
that the charities of the Christians were so extensive 
— it may, perhaps, be said so excessive — that they 
drew very many impostors to the Church, and when 
the victory of Christianity was achieved, the en- 
thusiasm for charity displayed itself in the erection 
of numerous institutions that were altogether un- 
known to the pagan world. . . . This vast and un- 
ostentatious movement of charity, operating in the 
village hamlet and in the lonely hospital, staunching 
the widow's tears and following all the windings of 
the poor man's griefs, presents few features the im- 
agination can grasp, and leaves no deep impression 
on the mind. The greatest things are often those 
which are most imperfectly realized; and certainly 
no achievements of the Christian Church are more 
truly great than those which it has effected in the 
sphere of charity. For the first time in the history 
of mankind it has inspired many thousands of men 
and women, at the sacrifice of all worldly interests, 
and often under circumstances of extreme discom- 
fort or danger, to devote their entire lives to the 
single object of assuaging the sufferings of humanity. 
It has covered the globe with countless institutions 
of mercy* absolutely unknown to the whole pagan 
world. It has indissolubly united in the minds of 
men the idea of supreme goodness with that of 
active and constant benevolence. It has placed in 
every parish a religious minister, who, whatever may 
be his other functions, has at least been officially 
charged with the superintendence of an organiza- 
tion of charity, and who finds in this office one of 
the most important as well as one of the most 
legitimate sources of his power. 

The emphasis so long laid upon charity, in 



178 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 

the sense of almsgiving, has not proven an 
unmixed good in Christian history. As in the 
days of Christ, when some followed him on 
account of the loaves and fishes, so often 
unworthy characters have attached themselves 
to the Christian community on account of 
material benefits received. But even this is 
not the worst phase in the history. With 
the very fact of giving itself a false virtue 
in many cases came to be associated. The 
very teaching of large sections of the Church 
has become tainted with the notion that alms- 
giving is a sort of purchase price paid by the 
donor for a higher seat in heaven. It is a 
misfortune that among the consecrations and 
activities of Christians the mere giving of 
earthly goods has so long and so widely held 
large and disproportionate place in the con- 
ception of Christian duties and privileges. 
Even now multitudes seem to think their en- 
tire duty discharged when they have given 
a modicum of their material prosperity to the 
causes of charity. 

The real Christian motive is something im- 
measurably broader and deeper than all this. 
Divinest and largest inspirations are coming to 
fruitage in modern Christian life in the awak- 
ened sense of God's Fatherhood, and of the 
Divine Sonship and Brotherhood of man. 



CHRISTIAN SERVICE 179 

When any man awakens to the fact that he 
is potentially and rightfully God's son; that 
all men of all races are, as his human brothers, 
under God's purchase to this same heritage, 
there is opened to him a field of motive and 
of vision as broad as humanity, as high as 
eternity. This view becomes at once a great 
leveler of artificial distinctions. It illuminates 
Christ's practical attitude toward the poor, 
the unprivileged, and outcasts of society. 
Stripping each soul from its artificial, and it 
may be forbidding, garb, he measured its 
worth alone in the light of its divine possi- 
bilities. This view, when fairly apprehended, 
will clothe every human being, no matter how 
apparently hopeless his condition, with poten- 
tially infinite values. It leaves absolutely no 
space for social or caste exclusiveness in the 
field of evangelistic endeavor. It installs the 
full-orbed Christian a citizen of the entire 
world, a brother of all humanity. This is the 
motor-nerve of Christian missions. The mes- 
sage of Christianity is for all races. Its great 
light is for those who inhabit the dark places of 
the earth. Its message of sympathy and of 
healing is for the sick, the poor, the unpriv- 
ileged, the hopeless among all peoples. The 
apprehension of this view has inspired the 
most superb moral heroisms of history. It 



180 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 

was this which made Paul, the first Christian 
missionary to the Gentile world, morally 
irresistible; this which has given him imper- 
ishable place in the admiration of mankind. 
It was this view which in the thirteenth cen- 
tury transformed Francis of Assisi from a 
"merry-hearted and careless fellow," from the 
spirit of a dude and a worldling, into one of 
the foremost saints of historv. It was this 
which prompted him to lay all his wealth upon 
the altars of the Church, and to adopt Poverty 
as his bride; this which drove him in tireless 
ministry to the sick, the lepers, and the poor; 
this which sent him upon distant journeys 
to Illyricum, to Spain, and even to Palestine, 
everywhere preaching Christ, until at last, 
literally worn and spent, he laid himself down 
to die. It was this view which transformed 
Ignatius Loyola from an unbridled libertine 
into an apostolic missionary of Jesus Christ; 
this that sent Francisco Xavier on his perilous 
and ceaseless missionary journeys to Japan 
and to the Indies. A roll call of the indom- 
itable founders of missionary empire would 
present countless names of those whose spir- 
itual heroism has lent imperishable luster to 
the moral history of mankind. 

William Cary, the converted cobbler, who 
translated the Bible into languages spoken by 



CHRISTIAN SERVICE 181 

three hundred million of Orientals; David 
Brainerd, who consecrated his talents to carry- 
ing civilization and Christianity to the savages 
of the wilderness; Henry Martyn, the brilliant 
Cambridge scholar, making by his translations 
the Scriptures, in whole or in part, accessible 
to one fourth the inhabitants of the globe; 
not only this, but literally spending himself 
in Christian labors among the poor in India, 
until, exhausted by fatigue and wasted by 
disease, he sank in death at the early age of 
thirty-two; Robert Morrison in China writing 
a grammar of the language and translating the 
Bible into the dialects, waiting undiscouraged 
seven years before being permitted to rejoice 
in his first convert; Chalmers in New Guinea; 
Paton in the South Sea Islands; Livingstone, in 
Christ-like passion, seeking the salvation of 
the Africans, forgetting that they were black 
and remembering only that they were fellow- 
mortals; and those more recent men, the 
Butlers, the Parkers, and the Thoburns of 
India; Griffith John, Timothy Richard, James 
W. Bashford, and Wilson S. Lewis of China 
— these men, inspired by the love and the 
heroism of the cross, have risen to the highest 
types of Christian character. They rank among 
the moral altruists of history, great in faith, 
great in hope, great in action, because their 



182 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 

own souls were filled with Christ's vision of 
humanity. Their service, a Christ-inspired 
service, can never be fully portrayed. 

Sir Alexander McArthur, an eminent English 
publicist, says: 

I believe the advancement of civilization, the ex- 
tension of commerce, the increase' of knowledge in 
arts, science, and literature, the promotion of civil 
and religious liberty, the development of countries 
rich in undiscovered mineral and vegetable wealth, 
are all intimately identified with and, to much a 
larger extent than most people are aware of, depend- 
ent upon the work of the missionaries; and I hold 
that the missionary has done more to civilize and 
to benefit the heathen world than any or all other 
agencies ever employed. 

Bishop W. F. Oldham, born in India, and 
a lifelong observer of missions and missionary 
workers, writing of the missionaries, says: 

They are revolutionizing society. They are 
waking ancient peoples from the graves of the past. 
They are kindling a new passion for freedom. 
They are breaking the bonds of ancient superstitions 
and conservative traditions. They are breathing 
new life into multiplied millions of the human fam- 
ilies. If there be a rebirth in China — and the 
pangs of a new life are being felt in India, and the 
dark places of Africa are being wrested from the 
dominion of cruelty and lust — if, in a word, the 
thraldom of ignorance and wrong is being overturned 
in half the world, the commanding figure behind the 
whole movement that is doing these things is the 
humble missionary. 



CHRISTIAN SERVICE 183 

I have emphasized missionary service, be- 
cause the history of this service, in an eminent 
manner, illustrates those high moral enthusiasms 
for humanity which are begotten only in the 
faith and experiences of Jesus Christ. When 
a man has really entered into Christ's vision 
of Divine Sonship and of Human Brotherhood, 
he can no longer entertain a narrow view 
either of duty or of opportunity in his rela- 
tions to Christ's kingdom. He must awaken 
to a sense of true partnership with Jesus Christ 
in the mission of world-redemption. 

If it be a fact that Jesus is revealing himself 
with ever-growing fullness to human thought, 
then, from many standpoints, it must follow 
that enlarging conceptions of the meaning of 
Christ's kingdom must enter into the Chris- 
tian consciousness. There can be no doubt 
that the Christian world is awaking to a new 
and greatly enlarged view both concerning the 
scope of Christ's mission and the agencies of 
its promotion. In Christianity and the New 
Age I express perhaps as well as I am able to 
do my view and conviction concerning some 
of the promotive factors of the larger ideals. 
In the chapter on "Modern Prophets" the 
following characterization is given: 

They are men of high culture, men of vision who 
have both large insight into and outlook upon life. 



184 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 

They are patriots, men with a large love of country. 
They are lovers of their kind, men who see the larger 
possibilities in human nature, and who ardently de- 
sire to remove obstacles to progress and to promote 
the conditions through which all men may come to 
their best. They are independent thinkers. They 
are not the hired creatures of either corporate or 
private interests. They are not partisans. Their 
vision is not blinded by greed. They are unselfish 
workers for humanity. They have the courage of 
their convictions. The most fruitful source of their 
ideals is the gospel of Jesus Christ. They exalt 
Christ himself as the supreme Teacher and Exemplar 
of the new humanity. They dwell in clear atmos- 
pheres of thought and of observation. The moral 
qualities of the social, industrial, mercantile, and 
political worlds are by none more clearly seen and 
measured than by these. To them in an eminent 
degree is given to view the evils, the frauds, the in- 
justices, the oppressions of society as in the very 
white light of righteousness. Their indignation is 
aroused against all monopolistic policies, the exe- 
cution of which means the depression of the social, 
intellectual, or moral possibilities of the poor and 
the defenseless. Their sense of human worth is so 
supreme, their view of God's impartial love for all 
his children so clear, that, as in the case of their 
ancient prototype, the word of the Lord is in their 
hearts as a burning fire shut up in their bones, so 
that they cannot refrain from lifting up their voices 
until the Lord shall have delivered the soul of the 
poor from the hand of evildoers. 



Dr. William DeWitt Hyde, president of 
Bowdoin College, has recently issued a book 
entitled The Gospel of Good Will as Revealed 



CHRISTIAN SERVICE 185 

in Contemporary Scriptures. The author takes 
as his type of "Contemporary Scriptures" The 
Passing of the Third Floor Back; The Servant 
in the House; Thomas Mott Osborne's Within 
Prison Walls; An American Citizen, by John 
Graham Brooks; How Belgium Saved Europe; 
Dennison's Beside the Bowery; Masefield's The 
Everlasting Mercy; Riis's The Making of an 
American and The Battle With the Slums; 
and Churchill's Inside of the Cup. These 
selections, which Dr. Hyde has been pleased 
to designate as "Contemporary Scriptures," are 
taken from current plays, from chapters of the 
War, from biography, from poetry, from novels, 
from discussions as to the duties of citizen- 
ship and the problem of the slums. 

The subtitle "Contemporary Scriptures" may 
possibly come with something of shock to 
some minds. But why? If Christianity has 
not by this time put its leaven into, and 
furnished the highest themes for, current lit- 
erature, then we would have to regard it as 
having disastrously failed in at least a large 
section of its mission. Our historians, novel- 
ists, and poets are the real seers, if we have 
any, of the modern age. To whom may we 
look for luminous interpretation of loftiest 
faith, to whom for vision of the larger applica- 
tions of Christianity to the broader needs of 



186 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 

humanity, if not to these elect minds? In 
any event, it is only a dull ear that fails to 
hear the prophetic voices of the age; only a 
purblind vision that fails to discern the rising 
tide of new and transforming movements which 
are both challenging and taxing the very 
genius of Christian leadership. 

The signal word that lies at the heart of 
the modern Christian demand is — SERVICE. 
Good will among men is the spirit in which 
this service is to be fulfilled. The distinctive 
characteristic of the modern view is not that 
of alms-giving in the sense of meeting the 
immediate physical needs of the unfortunate, 
but, rather, that larger duty of Christian 
society to remove and to destroy the very 
insanitary conditions which are the breeders 
of social misfortune and poverty. Shailer 
Mathews, one of the clearest visioned of the 
modern prophets, has recently said: "There is 
only one great creative enthusiasm in American 
Protestantism — the gospel of a saved society 
as well as of saved individuals." Another 
brilliant modern prophet, the lamented Charles 
Silvester Home, doing his last work with 
young men in the school of the prophets at 
Yale University, said: 

The young preachers of recent years have explored 
the contents of the word "righteousness" with the 



CHRISTIAN SERVICE 187 

enthusiasm of pioneers opening up rich and fertile 
lands for the inheritance of the future. Something 
has been happening even within the academic 
borders of our colleges. Men have been facing life 
as it is, and bringing it to the light of Christ. The 
social economist has invaded our quiet sanctuaries 
of religious thought with his disturbing facts and 
figures; and our young men have seen visions. The 
new compulsion has driven them down to the over- 
crowded areas where the disinherited of civilization 
make shift to exist; and the result has been that 
unique personal experience which changes scientific 
statistics into human facts. Is anyone surprised 
that a new note can be detected in our preaching? 
Does anyone marvel that young prophets are fling- 
ing down their challenge to society; and that features 
of industrialism which have been too long accepted 
as inevitable are to-day the objects of fiery arraign- 
ment by men who are looking at them through eyes 
which Christ has purged and enlightened? We are 
beginning to believe things which would have ap- 
palled our ancestors. We are beginning to believe 
that poverty need not exist; and that the restric- 
tions upon human life and happiness, due to poverty, 
may be abolished. We see in the near future an 
almost indefinite elevation of the standard of living; 
and we throw the whole authority of Christianity 
into the scales in favor of the two great modern 
ideals, that work shall be equitably remunerated, 
and that wealth shall be equitably distributed. 

After all, it is not strange. Great causes always 
create a race of prophets. The watchword of the 
past century was Freedom. What orators the 
passion for freedom created in this great land! 
Aye, and what martyrs for freedom it made ! The 
watchword of our new century is Justice. It will 
create as splendid an army of prophets; and it may 



188 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 

very well be that before the victory is won, men and 
women will have to buy the new inheritance at 
great price. But buy it they will, for the master 
passion in the breasts of our young men is that the 
will of the Father shall be done "on earth as in 
heaven." . . . The preacher who is going forth unto 
the battlefield to-day for the kingdom of God on 
earth, will enter the fray to hearkening strains of 
music. The Church of God to-day does not despair 
of calling into existence a Christian civilization. It 
refuses to acquiesce in the permanence of those social 
vices and social wrongs that have intrenched them- 
selves so deeply even under the visible authority of 
the cross. There is arising an army of young 
knights of Christ who have taken sacramental 
vows that none of their brethren shall have to live 
in the future under conditions that are fatal alike 
to physical health and to even a moderate standard 
of chastity and honor. They have vowed that the 
cruel exigencies of a merciless competition shall not 
always kill the truth and self-respect of those who 
are taken in its toils. They are resolved that the 
progress of humanity shall be something better and 
nobler than an unrelieved struggle for existence; and 
men something diviner than 

"Dragons of the prime 
That tear each other in their slime." 



Christianity must work itself vitally into all 
the organism of human society. It must fur- 
nish finally the practical and controlling ideals 
of education, of business and political ethics, 
of home and social intercourse, of the uses of 
capital. Its ideals of righteousness must be so 



CHRISTIAN SERVICE 189 

infused in civilization as to bring about a com- 
pact of peace and good will among the nations, 

When the war-drum throbs no longer 
And the battle-flags are furled 

In the Parliament of man, 
The federation of the world. 

The final ideal of Revelation is that of a 
new heaven and a new earth wherein dwelleth 
righteousness. The capital city of the new 
earth is the "New Jerusalem," a holy city 
which is to come down from God out of heaven. 
The foundations of this city are to be prepared 
by a redeemed Church. Spiritually regenerated 
men, men of largest intelligence and consecra- 
tion, sun-crowned men, will henceforth be more 
than ever needed as the upbuilders of Christ's 
kingdom in the earth. Such are to be the 
moral regenerators of human society. They are 
to make the very earth a fit dwelling place 
for God and his people. This mission calls 
for a program of service far larger and far 
more varied than has yet been entertained in 
Christian thought. This program is such as 
could be inspired only by the spirit of Chris- 
tianity. That Christianity has given birth to 
this conception is signal proof of its own 
divinity. 



VIII 
THE PRAGMATIC TEST 



What we have felt and seen 

With confidence we tell; 
And publish to the sons of men 

The signs infallible. 

If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine. 



Under the inspiring influence of Christ's teaching and 
example the Christian Church asserted the individual rights 
of man; recognized the divine image in every rational being; 
taught the common creation and the common redemption, 
and the destination of all for immortality and glory; raised 
the humble and lowly; comforted the prisoner and captive, 
the stranger and exile; proclaimed chastity as a funda- 
mental virtue, elevated woman to a dignity and equality 
with man; upheld the sanctity of the marriage tie; laid the 
foundations of the Christian family and home; moderated 
the evils and undermined the foundations of slavery; op- 
posed polygamy and concubinage; denounced the exposure 
of children as murder; made relentless war on the bloody 
games of the arena and circus, on the shocking indecencies 
of the theater, and on cruelty, oppression, and vice; infused 
into a heartless and loveless world the spirit of love and 
brotherhood; transformed sinners into saints, frail women 
into heroines, and lit up the darkness of the tomb by the 
bright ray of unending bliss of heaven. — Philip Schaff. 

Although the career of the elder Pitt and the splendid 
victories by land and sea that were won during his ministry, 
form unquestionably the most dazzling episodes in the reign 
of George II, they must yield, I think, in real importance 
to that religious revolution which shortly before had begun 
in England by the preaching of the Wesleys and Whitefield. 
—W. E. H. Lecky. 



CHAPTER VIII 
THE PRAGMATIC TEST 

Pkagmatism as a distinct system is one of 
the younger members of the philosophic family. 
William James tells us that the term was first 
introduced into philosophy by Mr. Charles 
Peirce in 1878. Webster's definition of philo- 
sophical pragmatism is as follows: "The doc- 
trine that the whole meaning of a conception 
is to be sought in its practical consequences, 
and that the purpose of thinking is to develop 
beliefs which shall serve as general principles 
of conduct." 

Pragmatism as a philosophy deals primarily, 
it would be true perhaps to say exclusively, 
with the facts of experience. Dismissing sub- 
stantially all abstract theories, all the posits 
of an arbitrary theology, all logical deductions 
based simply on premises of academic thought, 
pragmatism proposes to keep company alone 
with the facts of experience, and to seek from 
these facts the truths which shall furnish prac- 
tical guidance for both faith and conduct. 
The difference between pragmatism and ration- 

193 



194 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 

alism is stated as follows: "The one is uncom- 
fortable away from facts; the other is com- 
fortable only in the presence of abstractions/' 
The habit of pragmatism is defined as "the 
attitude of looking away from first things, 
principles, categories, supposed necessities, and 
of looking toward last things, fruits, conse- 
quences, facts." The theory of pragmatism is 
that philosophy should begin its teachings 
about life from the standpoint of experience 
itself. This is the natural genius of philosophic 
thought. Practically, men seek to know the 
meaning of life's experiences here and now, 
experiences that rise in the very midst of life's 
activities. Pragmatism assumes that to know 
this is the key to all problems. The terminal 
points of life and destiny, the beginning or the 
end of our being, may not be unimportant 
subjects of thought; but we are to derive our 
most truthful and valuable conceptions of these 
from the facts and trends of life's present 
experiences. "Interested in no conclusions but 
those which our minds and our experiences 
work out together, she has no a priori prej- 
udices against theology. If theological ideas 
prove to have a value for concrete life, they 
will be true, for pragmatism, in the sense of 
being good for so much. For how much more 
they are true will depend entirely on their 



THE PRAGMATIC TEST 195 

relations to the other truths that also have 
to be acknowledged." 

It is thus hinted that a task for pragmatism 
is to give coordination to, to find harmony of 
relationship for, all accepted truths. When 
truths of experience seem to be in conflict, 
this must mean either that the inclusive facts 
have not received full interpretation, or that 
somewhere there has been a misconstruction 
of the facts themselves. The lessons from all 
experience must be found finally to stand in 
relations of mutual harmony. It is vital to 
this philosophy that the full and exact mean- 
ing of the facts of experience as bearing upon 
life should be understood. Also that the 
lessons of all facts as interpreted should not 
be found finally discordant with the larger 
consensus of life's experiences. Thus it appears 
that the pragmatic philosophy has much to do 
to guard securely the territory within its own 
assigned borders. 

The central teaching of pragmatism is that 
all of life's values for truth and for guidance 
are furnished us in the lessons of experience. 
The value of any assumed fact, whether in 
the realm of theology or of philosophy, is to 
be assayed only by its practical effects on life. 
If a fact or an idea in practical application is 
found to be beneficial to life, then by so far 



196 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 

it is true; if otherwise, it is false. "The true 
is the name of whatever proves itself to be 
good in the way of belief, and good too for 
definite, assignable reasons." Such is prag- 
matism. 

If pragmatism were offered to us as a uni- 
versal and adequate philosophy of life, we 
might perhaps wisely hesitate to accept it as 
such. No less acute philosopher than Rudolf 
Eucken characterizes pragmatism as an incom- 
plete and misleading philosophy, a philosophy 
that furnishes really an unworthy basis for the 
spiritual life of man. He thinks that prag- 
matism reverses the essential idea of truth 
itself. The deepest conception of truth is to 
be found in the idea that "in truth man attains 
to something superior to all his own opinions 
and inclinations, something that possesses a 
validity completely independent of any human 
consent; the hope of an essentially new life 
is thus held out to man, a vision of a wider 
and richer being, an inner communion with 
reality, a liberation from all that is merely 
human. On the other hand, when the good 
of the individual and of humanity becomes 
the highest aim and the guiding principle, truth 
sinks to the level of a merely utilitarian opin- 
ion." From the pragmatic basis, Eucken sees 
room for irreducible anarchy in the field of 



THE PRAGMATIC TEST 197 

truth itself. His construction is that prag- 
matism confines its ends to human life, at 
best to civilization on the broad scale. He 
doubts whether pragmatism thus yields a 
philosophy of the highest values. He asks: 
"Is this life, when taken as in itself the final 
thing, really worth all the trouble and excite- 
ment, all the work and effort, all the suffering 
and sacrifice, that it costs? When we examine 
this life, with its vanity and show and its 
inner emptiness, when we consider how it is 
penetrated through and through by impurity 
and pretense, does it not seem a fearful con- 
tribution? Shall the quest after truth be 
made a means for the preservation of this 
exceedingly dubious life? We cannot conceive 
of any belief more hazardous than a faith in 
life so baseless as this." 

Eucken, nevertheless, sees much to approve 
in the pragmatic philosophy. He even suggests 
the desirability that German thinkers should 
give more attention to this system of thought. 
There can be no question that pragmatism is 
receiving large, perhaps widening, attention and 
indorsement among highly competent thinkers. 
Dr. Borden P. Bowne, of whom Eucken has 
written, "Dr. Bowne was a philosopher of 
America, and as such all America may be 
proud of him and his memory," was himself 



198 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 

much of a pragmatist. He was quite in the 
habit of subjecting speculative and difficult 
questions to the processes of life itself. Ex- 
perience is the great solver of life's difficult 
problems. "How does it work in life?" is a 
question which Bowne freely used as a test 
of religious values. Bowne believed fully, 
however, in the overruling of a Beneficent 
Spirit in the world, and that the working of 
this Spirit is historically demonstrated in the 
actual and wide trends of human betterment. 
The great historic beliefs born of Christianity 
are found "contributing toward a higher civil- 
ization, a nobler moral order, a clearer concep- 
tion of duty and the greatest good to the 
race." These beliefs are pragmatically self- 
proving. Bowne's pragmatism, however, was 
no simply utilitarian dream. It was founded 
on the broadest theistic basis, a basis which 
reverently accepted both the wisdom and 
beneficence of God's rule in the world, and 
is, therefore, not subject to the whims of 
individual interpretation. 

In any event, it may be accepted, pragmatism 
presents certain valuable criteria to the tests 
of which we may confidently submit the human 
values of the Christian faith. The remaining 
sections of this discussion will be devoted to 
inquiries, from a few chosen and signal fields, 



THE PRAGMATIC TEST 199 

as to the verdict of the pragmatic view con- 
cerning these values. 

1. Let us first venture into the field of 
general history. It has been often asserted, 
and by most competent historical authorities, 
that the moral world of the Roman age, at 
the time when Christianity first asserted its 
strength, was blase. Religiously, with of course 
noted exceptions, it was a world cynical, faith- 
less, hopeless, Godless. The nominal gods were 
numerous. But, if worshiped at all, they were 
invested with an atmosphere of gross super- 
stition. There were no great moral compulsions 
in the polytheistic thought of the age. The 
strongest philosophers were skeptics. The ex- 
ceedingly rich, of whom there were many, not 
only lived under the surfeit and pall of luxury, 
but they bore themselves with an air of super- 
cilious scorn and contempt toward the unpriv- 
ileged life around them. They, for the most 
part, had no upward spiritual vision, and life 
itself was made heavy under the cloy and 
congestion of exhausted pleasures. 

On that hard Pagan world disgust 

And secret loathing fell; 
Deep weariness and sated lust 

Made human life a hell. 

Human society was a medley. In it there 
existed all extremes of social condition. Mul- 



200 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 

titudes were poor, and their life was hopeless 
and unaspiring. The majority were slaves, 
and they were regarded as mere cattle, human 
beings without personality, without rights, with 
no hope, and no future except to grind and to 
be ground in the relentless mills of desperate 
fate. It was a world that coarsely amused 
itself by the exhibitions of human beings thrown 
to wild beasts in the amphitheaters, and by 
duels of gladiators engaged in mortal combat. 
It was a sensual world. Some luminous excep- 
tions must be remembered, but for the most 
part it was a world in which atrocious im- 
morality both abounded and was shameless. 
Divorce, the conspicuous index of a frivolous, 
lax, and immoral society, was prevalent. 
Woman was held in low esteem. Infanticide 
was notoriously common. Eucken himself 
characterizes this as a world of "decadent and 
perishing humanity," peopled with a race 
"grown dull and weary." 

It was into such a world as this that Chris- 
tianity, with its renewing ideals and life-giving 
power, made its advent. Nothing can be 
more impressive than the contrast between 
Rome and early Christianity. Rome was im- 
perial, all-powerful, world-ruling, seemingly irre- 
sistible, treasuring in herself the wealth of all 
historic traditions, philosophies, arts, laws, 



THE PRAGMATIC TEST 201 

learning. Christianity took its origin under 
conditions commonly regarded as contemptible. 
It grew under the open sky of poverty. It 
must come to stalwart youth, if at all, only in 
a withering atmosphere of social ostracism and 
scorn. When it came to the consciousness of 
its mission it found itself confronted by officially 
sanctioned conspiracies of appalling opposition. 
Its pathway of progress lay through the terri- 
tory of martyrdom, a territory in which on 
every hand it had to face the fiery ordeals of 
the sword and of the stake. 

But Christianity, thus born, and thus out- 
lawed and criminalized, proved herself morally 
invincible. She brought a new spiritual sway 
and a new social life to the empire. In the 
face of all heathen philosophies and usages, 
she presented a gospel of high and pure 
ideals, of uncompromising moral demands. 
She preached a gospel of helpfulness and 
sympathy, a gospel of divine healing from sin 
and its guilt, a gospel of human brotherhood, 
a gospel inspirational with the promise of a 
holy and heavenly immortality possible to all 
men, to the slave as w^ell as to the king, to 
the poor as to the rich, to the ignorant as well 
as to the seer. Christianity did not hesitate 
not only openly to rebuke, but to put itself 
in positive reversal to, the rooted evils of the 



202 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 

age. She denounced the wickedness of divorce; 
presented a standard of divine worth and 
dignity for womanhood; denounced infanticide 
as murder; proscribed the brutal games of the 
amphitheater; taught that the very slave must 
be treated as a human brother, the legitimate 
holder of a birthright in God's spiritual family, 
the rightful heir to all the benefits of a divine 
redemption. 

Nothing in contrast with the traditional and 
dominant habits of the age could be more 
radical, more revolutionary, than this pro- 
gram of Christianity as thrust into the life 
of the Roman empire. This program must 
be humanly anticipated as hopeless, a program 
indeed impossible unless perchance God should 
be found reenforcing it with the agencies of 
his own infinite Spirit. History records the 
result. Christianity created a new moral em- 
pire in the old paganism. She brought a puri- 
fying, transforming, and uplifting faith and 
hope to the old and dying world. A new moral 
life, instinct with divinest inspirations for hu- 
manity, put its captivating lure upon untold 
multitudes of the poor and the hopeless, and 
they set their faces toward a new spiritual 
heritage. The features of this history are too 
numerous and too various to permit detailed 
mention. But the history itself stands as the 



THE PRAGMATIC TEST 203 

record of what, on the whole, must be regarded 
as the most marvelous period of moral trans- 
formation and of social uplift which has taken 
place in the human ages. This movement 
grew entirely out of the experiences of the 
Christian life. From Christian inspirations 
were begotten the totality of consecration, the 
quenchless zeal, the dauntless heroism, the 
altruistic service, the unswerving faith and 
hope, which resulted in the spiritual conquest 
of that pagan world. The movement as a 
whole may have been characterized by a some- 
what mixed history. Doubtless mistakes, and 
occasionally alien motives, may here and there 
have marred its perfection; but it is absolutely 
certain that all pure Christian action, the 
kind of action which dominated the history, 
was itself an unmeasured contribution to hu- 
man betterment. If a movement is to be 
judged by its fruits, then a pragmatic philos- 
ophy can ask for no better proof of the truth 
of Christianity than is furnished in this history 
of moral conquest. 

2. The Church, beyond all question, is the 
loftiest and greatest human organism which 
Christianity has created. But from the very fact 
that it is composed of human elements it is ex- 
posed to the misdirections of human ignorance, 
human selfishness, and ambitious human rival- 



204 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 

ries. A mistake quite common in historic 
statement is to make the Church a synonym 
for Christianity. The two terms are not 
synonymous. The Church, which ought to 
represent the true household of faith, has too 
often in its counsels, its enactments, and in 
the very spirit of its conduct shown itself 
untrue and a betrayer of its Divine Master. 
Historically, the Church has been much in- 
fluenced, much affected in tone and color, by 
the thought and customs of the civilizations 
through which it has made its way. As I 
write, my study windows look out upon the 
beautiful Susquehannah, a river justly famed 
for its picturesque character. But this river 
drains wide mountain sheds. In seasons of 
heavy rains the soils of these mountains are 
washed down, and they impart to the waters 
of the river, ordinarily clear, their own colors. 
So the Church in many periods of its history 
has been so interfused by the spirit of worldli- 
ness, so toned and tempered by the thought 
and customs of its environment, as to leave 
it only with an impaired and enfeebled quality 
as the true representative of Christianity. 

It has seemed both a historic and a vital 
necessity that Christianity all along the ages 
should in periods reassert its own pure and 
divine life. No oppositions from without, no 



THE PRAGMATIC TEST 205 

perversions from within, have been able to 
prevent the dynamic uprising, the irresistible 
assertion, from time to time, of its own native 
and life-renewing power. Such periods are 
familiarly known as revivals, or reformations. 
As in nature, however murky the skies, or 
however dark and menacing the clouds, even 
though the change be marked by lightnings and 
thunders, the storms are driven away, and the 
sun breaks forth in unclouded splendor; so, 
every now and then, however vicious the per- 
version, or however accumulated and dense the 
obscurities, Christianity has asserted the power 
to clear its own spiritual skies. 

Such a period was that of the Wesleyan 
Revival in England. Dr. Cadman has char- 
acterized this revival as "an almost unparalleled 
transformation of the English national char- 
acter effected under the impulse of a revival of 
Christianity." It is a common agreement of 
all historians who have treated the subject 
that prior to this movement the spiritual life of 
the Church in England was in most lamentable 
decline. English deism was doubtless a fruitful 
source of reenforcement to French atheism. 
The Encyclopedists of France, armed with every 
weapon of "eloquence, poetry, humor, and 
satire," deliberately sought utterly to banish all 
traces of Christian thought from the national 



206 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 

literature. Their influence swept over the 
nation "like a sirocco, withering not only the 
sentiments of religion, but the instincts of hu- 
manity, and subverting at last, in common 
ruin, the altar, the throne, and the moral 
protections of domestic life." This atheistic 
fury of French thought reacted upon England 
until its destructive force had wellnigh sub- 
merged the popular religious sentiment of the 
nation. English clergymen, both Anglican and 
Nonconformist, had become practically skep- 
tical and spiritually inert. They gave chief 
attention to the shibboleths of systems, to 
ecclesiastical subsidiaries, while the crying 
crimes and the perishing moral life of surround- 
ing communities received from them no arrest- 
ing voice. The regenerating power of Chris- 
tianity, as though it were a dead body from 
which the living soul had escaped, seemed lost 
to the Church. 

From many contemporary testimonies I quote 
briefly as follows: Of this period Wesley asks: 
"What is the present characteristic of the Eng- 
lish nation? It is ungodliness. Ungodliness is 
our universal, our constant, our peculiar char- 
acter.'' "Watts declares that there was a 
general decay of vital religion in the hearts and 
lives of men; that this declension of piety and 
virtue was common among Dissenters and 



THE PRAGMATIC TEST 207 

Churchmen; that it was a general matter of 
mournful observation among all who lay the 
cause of God to heart; and he called upon 
every one to use all possible efforts for the re- 
covery of dying religion in the ivorld" Arch- 
bishop Seeker says: "In this we cannot be mis- 
taken, that an open and professed disregard 
has become, through a variety of unhappy 
causes, the distinguishing character of the 
present age. . . . Such are dissoluteness and 
contempt of principle in the higher part of the 
world, and the profligacy, intemperance, and 
fearlessness of committing crimes, in the lower, 
as must, if this torrent of impiety stop not, be- 
come absolutely fatal. . . . Christianity is rid- 
iculed and railed at with very little reserve, and 
the teachers of it without any at all." The 
great Bishop Butler said: "It has come to be 
taken for granted that Christianity is no longer 
a subject of inquiry; but that it is now at length 
discovered to be fictitious. And, accordingly, 
it is treated as if in the present age, this were an 
agreed point among all persons of discernment, 
and nothing remained but to set it up as a 
subject for mirth and ridicule." 

Dr. S. Parkes Cadman, in his recent book, 
The Three Religious Leaders of Oxford, quotes 
from a publication calling for a "National Re- 
form of Manners," as follows: "All men agree 



208 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 

that atheism and prof aneness never got such a 
high ascendant as at this day. A thick gloom- 
iness hath overspread our horizon and our light 
looks like the evening of the world — vice and 
wickedness abound in every place; drunkenness 
and lewdness escape unpunished; our ears in 
most companies are filled with imprecations of 
damnation; and the corners of our streets every- 
where the horrible sounds of oaths, curses, and 
blasphemous execrations." 1 

It was in such an age as this, and in such an 
England, that three Oxford-educated young 
men emerged from their cloistered life to inau- 
gurate one of the great spiritual campaigns of 
history. John and Charles Wesley, George 
Whitefield: these men, diversely gifted, were 
swayed by a common and irresistible impulse. 
They had come, nearly simultaneously, into a 
clear and intense experience of the spiritual life. 
From this experience was dated for each of 
them his prophetic mission. The love of God 
transmuting itself into a Christlike passion for 
the salvation of men burned as a consuming 
fire in their very bones. In a tireless and re- 
sistless zeal, they summoned England to re- 
pentance, preaching the gospel of a divine 



1 For a vivid picture of the social and moral conditions of 
England in this general period, I refer the reader to Dr. 
Cadman's.book, pp. 240-258. 



THE PRAGMATIC TEST 209 

redemption from sin, urging upon all men of all 
ranks obedience to the conditions of the trans- 
formed spiritual life and the blessedness of 
heavenly fellowship. These men lived the 
lives of saints, pure in spirit and conduct, un- 
selfish in motive, unceasing in toil, pouring 
themselves out in prodigal ministries for the 
poor, the sinful, and the ignorant; approving 
themselves as very apostles of a divine salvation 
to a lost world. 

And what were the fruits of it all? Upon the 
humble and toiling masses of England, in fac- 
tories and mines, many of whom were not only 
ignorant, but profane, intemperate, dissolute, 
there set in a great tide of new and beneficent 
life. Under its transforming touch a multitude 
of the profane became devout of speech, the in- 
temperate became sober, the immoral pure and 
clean of life. Hundreds of families that w^ere 
godless, in grateful remembrance of w r hat had 
been done for their homes, reared altars of 
worship. Uncounted numbers took on new 
and pure ideals for life and conduct. Religious 
societies were multiplied. Habits of church- 
going and of public worship became a new 
order in many communities. The Bible, which 
had been a neglected and forgotten book, began 
to be searched by the masses, as containing for 
them the very words of life eternal. Cleanli- 



210 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 

ness and comfort, suitable raiment and right- 
mindedness, superseded the squalor and naked- 
ness of poverty and the vacant-mindedness and 
moral paralysis which are the sure products of 
dissolute living. Such are some of the direct 
fruits of the Wesleyan Revival upon the plains 
of England's humbler life. 

In the region of faith and morals this revival 
introduced a new atmosphere into the national 
thought. The English Church itself, slow to 
respond, and slower still to render due acknowl- 
edgments to the sources, was morally forced to 
set its face toward new spiritual standards, and 
to enter upon renewed spiritual ministries. 
The moral indifference, the spiritual skepticism, 
the purblind worldliness, in all the high places 
of England were shaken to the very foundations. 
The testimony of more than one historian is on 
record to the conviction that this revival saved 
England from an experience on her own soil of 
a destructive social and political cyclone like 
that of the French Revolution. 

But the moral fountains that found release 
in the Wesleyan Revival have proved the un- 
failing sources of spiritual streams which con- 
tinue richly to flow outward into all the world. 
Wherever Wesleyanism has gone there has 
sprung up an unbroken series of beneficent in- 
stitutions. It has reenforced itself on every 



THE PRAGMATIC TEST 211 

hand by the agencies of popular education and 
enlightenment. It has pioneered great mis- 
sionary movements, the outcome of which to- 
day is an ever-widening Christian empire with 
its seats securely established in the capitals of 
the world's paganism. Methodism is to-day 
world-wide. It numbers many millions in its 
constituencies. Wherever this force has gone 
it has held high the sanctions of social right- 
eousness, justice, domestic purity, holiness of 
personal life. Wherever it has gone it has 
shown itself implacable to the iniquities that 
blight human welfare, against political corrup- 
tion, against business dishonesty, against traffic 
in strong drink, against the gambling den and 
the brothel. It has relentlessly denounced 
evil amusements, amusements of a kind to 
corrupt the youthful imagination and to deaden 
the moral sense. The Wesleyan movement, in 
its distinctive character, has won for itself wide 
territories which it has peopled with the habita- 
tions of righteousness and of gladness. It has 
been the fruitful creator of song which has 
voiced itself in notes of spiritual triumph and 
joy. Its life to-day is more than ever prophetic. 
It carries in its present movements the 
prophecy of large place among the forces which 
shall witness the final triumph in all the earth 
of the beneficent kingdom of Jesus Christ. This 



212 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 

cause, let it not be forgotten, had its initial 
inspirations — -and the sources of its sustained 
and ever-growing power have remained the 
same — in personal religious experience. Mr. 
Lecky, referring to Wesley's experience of a 
"strange heart-warming" in the Aldersgate 
meeting, says: "It is, however, scarcely an ex- 
aggeration to say that the scene which took 
place in that humble meeting in Aldersgate 
Street forms an epoch in English history. The 
conviction which then flashed upon one of the 
most powerful and most active intellects in 
England is the true source of English" — he 
might have said of world — "Methodism." This 
movement has wrought, and is still immeasur- 
ably working, untold fruits of human weal. 
There seems nothing for a pragmatic philosophy 
to say of it, save that it furnishes the most in- 
contestable proof of the divine character of 
Christianity. 



IX 

THE PRAGMATIC TEST 

(continued) 



For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole 
world, and lose his own soul? or what shall a man give in 
exchange for his soul? — Matthew 16. 26. 

From the Protestant point of view religious individualism 
is legitimate, and inseparable from every higher form of 
religion, in so far as it asserts the right and the duty of the 
individual to enter into direct communion with God, to think 
freely about religious matters, to join or not to join such 
and such a religious society, and in so far as it asserts the 
decisive influence of the great religious individualities on the 
historic march of religions. Religious individualism, how- 
ever, runs the risk of weakening religion, when it does not 
recognize its social past, its origin in beliefs common to all 
the members of a society and the inevitable connections 
between the religious society and the political society — con- 
nections which are beneficial when they are based on respect 
for the real nature of the two institutions. — Professor 
Christian Eugene Ehrhardt. 

More and more it becomes apparent that for knowledge 
and help and hope concerning the deepest things of God 
and life and destiny we must depend on Jesus Christ or 
abandon ourselves to apathy or despair. ... A vast body 
of forces and impulses tend to drag men downward. Men 
are of the earth by one side of their nature; and the earth 
draws and claims its own. Hence the sense-life proves so 
attractive. And many are found who persistently claim that 
sense-life is all. On this plane selfishness and animalism 
soon develop; and the strong begin to think meanly of the 
weak and to oppress the weak; and caste is born; and op- 
pression and tyranny go hand in hand with animalism for the 
destruction of humanity. This tendency has been manifold 
in manifestation, but it is ever the same in spirit, and it is 
far enough from being finally cast out. And the most 
powerful agent against it is the life and words of Jesus 
Christ. He has borne the most effective testimony to the 
supreme worth of the individual man, and delivered the 
most effective rebuke to all attempts to degrade him. 

— Professor Borden Parker Bowne. 



CHAPTER IX 

THE PRAGMATIC TEST 

(continued) 

3. We may profitably inquire as to the prac- 
tical values of the Christian ideal for individual 
welfare. There has been age-long controversy 
between the constituted authorities of systems 
and individual rights. In primitive systems 
the individual was absorbed in the clan. In 
ancient family and tribal governments the 
father or the recognized chief exercised despotic 
authority over individuals and the community. 
Individualism, in the last analysis, means self- 
sovereignty, physical, intellectual, and spiritual 
self -direction. Christianity is eminently an in- 
dividualistic religion. Christ laid great stress 
upon individual worth. It can be said that the 
chief purpose of his Church is to secure, to con- 
serve, and to nurture individual salvation. 

Christ's uniform treatment of the individual 
harmonizes with this fundamental view. He 
was always reverent in his treatment of human 
nature. He saw in every man, under whatso- 
ever guise, divine potentialities. There were 

215 



216 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 

none so poor, so sinful, so abject, and so appar- 
ently hopeless, as to be beyond the range of his 
sympathetic and reverent treatment. Christ, 
in all his relations to humanity, gave not the 
slightest countenance to the artificial and 
supercilious distinctions of social caste. In his 
scales the soul of a slave would outweigh the 
values of the physical constellations. 

The Church, unfortunately, has not always 
conserved Christ's measurements of the worth 
and rights of the individual. The Church of 
Rome, arrogating to itself the absolutism of the 
empire, has assumed to assert its own authority 
as against all values and rights of the indi- 
vidual conscience and of private thinking. It 
assumes to hold in custody the very keys to 
the kingdom of heaven, the gates of which at 
its own sovereign will it can open or shut 
against the individual. Throughout much of 
its history this Church has assumed to dictate 
the very articles of intellectual belief and of 
religious faith, to which the individual must 
subscribe on pain, if he should refuse, of excom- 
munication from the kingdom of grace and 
glory. Some of the most appalling chapters 
in history are those which record the subsidizing 
by this Church of the secular arm for the in- 
fliction of torture and destruction upon those 
whom it has denounced as heretics. 



THE PRAGMATIC TEST 217 

The Reformation, even under Luther's lead- 
ership, effected only a partial release from the 
abuses which Rome had assumed sovereignly 
and habitually to inflict against the rights of the 
individual conscience. But one of the facts 
on which Luther insisted as fundamental was 
that moral obligation finally rests with the 
individual. In his view the only activities of 
moral value were those volitionally performed. 
Kant, probably more than any other single 
philosopher, has influenced modern thought. 
With him, the view is central that morality is 
personal, and that its chief function relates to 
the freedom and dignity of the individual. 

Organization and individualism would seem 
to be the opposite poles of society. Both 
should exist without antagonism, each serving 
the proper functions of the other. The ques- 
tion is as to the sane coordination of these two 
factors. Individualism, carried to the extreme, 
means social and civil anarchy. Organization, 
government, unlimited by restrictions which 
conserve individual rights, means despotism. 
Broadly, the motive of despotism has inflexibly 
held to the subordination of the individual by 
the Church or the state. The strife between 
authority and the individual has been a stand- 
ing conflict in history. The "Divine Right of 
Kings" and the "Infallible Church" stand for 



218 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 

forces which in large part have always with- 
stood the highest rights of the individual. 

There must be a rational meeting-ground 
between organized authority and the legitimate 
rights of the individual. Organized govern- 
ment there must be. Within rational limits, 
it is an imperative duty of the individual to 
loyally support government. The government 
polices and guards his rights. He enjoys the 
protection and security of its power. The 
community is safe and sane under its common 
rule. Government affords scope for the play 
of the patriotic instinct. No sane individual 
will deny obligation to, or withhold loyalty 
from, an equitable government. The real pith 
of the question inheres in what is the true 
function of government in relation to the indi- 
vidual. The true function of government is to 
guarantee the orderly ongoing of society. It 
institutes and authoritatively inflicts penalties 
against marauders and the lawless disturbers 
of public and domestic peace. It institutes a 
great machinery of public service, which it sup- 
ports by a system of taxation upon the citizens. 
It creates public buildings for governmental 
uses, builds public highways, conducts postal 
systems, supports systems of public education, 
and institutes many eleemosynary agencies 
which are supported from the public funds, 



THE PRAGMATIC TEST 219 

The ultimate function of government is that 
of highest service to the common good. In 
the last resort, this involves the best possible 
service and protection in the interests of indi- 
vidual rights and liberties. While author- 
itatively forbidding interference by the indi- 
vidual with the rights and duties of others, 
it guarantees to him protection and scope in 
the largest legitimate exercise of his own 
individuality. The individual measures at once 
both the highest and lowest points of value in 
the community life. The real value of the 
community itself is best measured by the 
quality of the individual units bred in its 
atmospheres. 

War has been a ruthless destroyer of indi- 
vidual rights. Its hordes of captives, including 
men, women, and children, have too generally 
been subjected to gross indignities and cruel- 
ties. Slavery is as old as history, but to the 
slave, even under vogue of the most humane 
conditions, there were never accorded the 
proper rights of the individual. While slavery 
in its older forms has been pretty generally 
banished from civilization, it still remains true 
that there inhere in the industrial organisms 
many conditions decidedly unfavorable to the 
best development of the individual. The cor- 
porations are organized for profit-making. 



220 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 

Upon this end their entire machinery is relent- 
lessly focused. Thousands of their workers 
are engaged in routine and most uninspirational 
pursuits. There is little or nothing in their 
vocations to kindle ideals or to stimulate to 
high achievement. These workers must accept 
such wages as the corporation can be induced 
to pay. The corporation management itself is 
essentially selfish. This is the underlying 
secret of the widespread alienation rife in the 
industrial world as between capital and labor. 
It cannot be denied that the dominant condi- 
tions of the industrial world, as now organized, 
are not favorable to the highest development 
of the individual laborer. In so far as this 
is true, it is obvious that large areas of bus- 
iness, under existing conditions, are as yet 
far from being conducted on a Christian basis. 
That there is so much in modern business 
methods that tends both to depress and to 
neutralize the individual toiler is not to the 
credit of the present civilization. I am quite 
aware that hard, grasping, and surfeited capital 
will be disposed promptly to construe and to 
dismiss all this as the language of an imprac- 
ticable dreamer. But God in his heaven is 
as much interested in the poorest laborer in 
the factory as in any autocrat of high finance. 
And God's method with the world will finally 



THE PRAGMATIC TEST 221 

win such universal approval as to put to 
shame the motives of conscienceless money. 
This is God's world, and all the men and 
women in it are God's children. God made 
nature bountiful. On the basis of the equitable 
distribution of nature's products, there should 
be no starving children, no shelterless families, 
none who are the abject slaves of overfed and 
heartless capital. There is a widening prophetic 
light moving upon the age in which can be 
clearly seen the coming of a better day for 
industrial humanity. In God's calendar this 
day bears definite date, and its dawning is 
as sure as the coming of to-morrow. In God's 
larger diagram of civilization humanity is 
treated as a democracy in which every man 
inherits the birthright of citizenship. Any 
agency, be it church, government, plutocracy, 
industrial despotism, which stands in the way 
of the highest development of the individual, 
stands by so much as opposed to the reign 
of Christ in the earth. 1 

Let us now more specifically ask: What are 

1 This field of fact and thought is too wide for present dis- 
cussion, and can here only be referred to. A general fact, 
however, should be guarded. Whatever improvements may 
come in the equitable adjustments of society, the time will 
never come when demerit will not reap its own reward; when 
thriftlessness, intemperance, immorality, and crime will not 
receive the just doom of outlawry. As long as crime in any 
form exists in the earth the mills of God's justice will never 
cease to grind. 



222 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 

the practical relations of Christianity to the 
individual? This is not to ask concerning 
things which can be measured in material 
values. It is not to ask concerning gold and 
silver, bank stocks, or wealth in merchandise 
or lands. It is to inquire concerning God's 
spiritual program for, his practical spiritual 
dealings with, humanity. Man is potentially 
God's child. He is made in God's intellectual 
image, therefore, capable of thinking God's 
thoughts. He is endowed with the faculties 
of a moral and worshipful nature, therefore 
capable of moral and spiritual fellowship with 
God. He is immortal, therefore potentially 
capable of infinite progress in knowledge, of 
an ever-deepening spiritual communion with, 
and likeness to, God. Nothing less than this 
is included in the Christian concept of man. 
But, if this standard is accepted, it utterly 
displaces all lesser measurements of human 
worth. In this high light it is clear that any 
agency or system, which of choice or delib- 
erately works detriment to the individual or 
to the community of individuals for the sake 
of promoting the selfish ends of another indi- 
vidual, or a community of individuals, thereby 
works a hurtful encroachment against the 
moral order. 

If Christ's program for man is large, he also 



THE PRAGMATIC TEST 223 

makes high and exacting demands upon his 
subjects. The Christian is to live in the pur- 
pose of perpetual separation from wrongdoing, 
from purposed sin. He is to cherish inward 
purity, cleanness of motive at the source of 
action, at the very seat of desire. Love toward 
God and toward man must be regnant in his 
life. He is to be unselfish in relation to his 
fellows, doing good to all men as he has oppor- 
tunity. He is to be forgiving in spirit, not 
returning evil for evil, or injury for injury. 
He is a sworn soldier of the cross; a joint 
partner with Christ in a mission of good for 
all the human world. 

If this scheme should seem to ordinary vision 
overtopping and impracticable, it is not to be 
forgotten that no man is asked to realize it 
in his own unaided strength. As a living and 
ever-present example there stands One before 
him whose life was historically a faultless 
exemplification of the perfect Christian ideal. 
Corresponding to this outward visible Per- 
fection, there is assured to the Christian an 
inward spiritual transformation of life, wrought 
by nothing less than the direct incoming of 
God into the life of the individual soul. This 
divine in-coming brings to the soul reenforce- 
ment against the assaults of evil temptation, 
begetting within all holy and benevolent de- 



224 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 

sires, filial confidence toward God, a stalwart 
hope of final triumph over sin and death, and 
of blessed heirship in immortality. We shall 
reach a true measurement of Christ's estimate 
of human worth only as we have insight into 
his regenerative mission for the individual. 
Christ literally begets in his disciples a new 
and divine spiritual life. The natural man 
must be "born again," born from on high, 
newly begotten by the Spirit of God. This 
conception is either absurd or it is divine. 
But it works pragmatically and infallibly in 
human experience. 

The Socialistic philosophy lays great stress 
upon the regenerative power of environment. 
Christ values environment only as it ministers 
to character. If men are evil in themselves, 
no environment can save them. A rich environ- 
ment only gives to men of vicious character 
and of evil appetites larger opportunity to 
indulge their evil propensities. Swine are 
swine even though housed in a mahogany sty 
and fed from a silver trough. Christ proposes 
to uplift the human world only on one divine 
basis. He plans to install the kingdom of 
God on earth through the consecrated living 
of spiritually regenerated men. 

Christ's method works in history. If any 
man is skeptical of this, his skepticism only 



THE PRAGMATIC TEST 225 

witnesses to the obscureness of his own vision. 
Nothing is historically clearer than that mul- 
titudes of the finest moral heroes of the race 
have lived and have grown spiritually great 
and strong under Christian inspirations. On 
the broadest scale the Christian philosophy, a 
philosophy which presses upon every soul the 
vision and sanction of eternal things, has been 
found equal to the development and main- 
tenance of highest moral heroism both for 
the individual and for civilization at large. 
The men most consciously in partnership with 
God have always been the peerless prophets 
of the world's moral progress. 

And now, let us ask, What does Christianity 
do for the disfranchised man? We have heard 
much of the slave, of the forlorn poor, of the 
man from whom opportunity has been forced 
by a doom to the drudgery of dwarfing toil. 
It must be confessed that society in its natural 
processes does very little to brighten and to 
inspire the lives of these men. Their enforced 
lot and environment do not in themselves 
minister to high and cheering hopes. But 
Christianity does come to all these classes to 
make them sharers in the divinest destinies. 
It recognizes no social castes. Its ministries 
of grace are characterized by no favoritism as 
between king and subject^ as between master 



226 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 

and slave. Before the cross of Christ all 
alike stand on a plane of common peership, 
all alike are the heirs of equal privilege, in the 
spiritual citizenship of the Kingdom. 

It is not easy for us to translate into modern 
thinking what must have been the sense of 
anomaly and wonder created by Saint Paul's 
impassioned plea to Philemon in behalf of 
Onesimus, a runaway slave. Philemon was a 
high-minded man, and doubtless a warm per- 
sonal friend of Saint Paul. Onesimus, as a 
runaway slave, by all the code, merited the 
most drastic punishment. But in Rome, the 
great refuge for the social outlaw, he had 
come in contact with Saint Paul, and had 
experienced Christian conversion. Under the 
promptings of a new conscience he felt that 
he must return to his master. And this is the 
occasion of Paul's letter to Philemon. How 
does he write concerning this slave? He calls 
him his own son, one whom he had spiritually 
begotten while he himself was in the bonds 
of his Roman imprisonment. He pleads with 
Philemon to forgive Onesimus, and to receive 
him not as a slave but even as a brother beloved 
both in the flesh and in the Lord. Nothing 
could be more in contrast with both the pagan 
spirit and custom of the age than the spirit 
of this letter. 



THE PRAGMATIC TEST 227 

It is well known to every student of Chris- 
tian history that one of the standing miracles 
of early Christianity was the spiritual con- 
version and transformation of the slave. Many 
of these whose bodies were in physical bondage 
were born into lives of spiritual freedom and 
sonship in Christ Jesus. Many of those whose 
physical lot was that of slaves have left undy- 
ing names in the hero lists of the early Church. 
Among those counted as the world's poor the 
inspirations of Christian experience have made 
the lives of multitudes pure, lovely, gentle, 
heroic. Christ never denounced wealth in 
itself considered. Some of his cherished friends 
were prosperous in temporal things. But when 
he would picture the most vivid lesson on the 
issues of human destiny, he instituted a com- 
parison between a rich man and a destitute 
beggar lying at the rich man's gate. The 
beggar died, and was carried by angels to 
Abraham's bosom. The rich man also died, 
and lifted up his eyes in torments. The de- 
cisive thing in this lesson is not that the one 
was rich and the other poor, but that the 
poor man in temper and faith was responsive 
to the divine will, while Dives, sumptuously 
fed and royally arrayed, was gross in soul, 
alien to the divine approach. 

The great revivals of Christianity have been 



228 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 

responded to by multitudes of the poor. Among 
these there have been wrought marvelous 
transformations of character. Their social con- 
ditions and relationships have been wondrously 
improved, and under the creative influence of 
the new life many of the children of the poor 
have gone forth to achieve for themselves 
careers of strength and of influence. To every 
man, however depressed by the doom of unin- 
spirational toil, Christianity comes with a 
message of divine cheer. It witnesses to him 
that he is God's child. It brings to him the 
moral and inspirational support of unseen 
spiritual forces. It fills his life with a sense 
of fortitude and peace inspired from unearthly 
sources. It assures him that there awaits 
him a glorified immortality in which he may 
forever enrich himself from the infinite min- 
istries of God's grace, glory, and power. The 
man so inspired becomes a moral hero. He 
says: "Whatever my present afflictions, they 
will be brief at the longest, and there awaits 
me a far more exceeding and eternal weight 
of glory. So I will not look at the things 
which are temporal, but at the things unseen, 
which are eternal." The man whose soul has 
been warmed by a sense of spiritual fellow- 
ship with Jesus Christ as his personal Saviour, 
and into whose convictions there has been 



THE PRAGMATIC TEST 229 

inspired a confident belief in Christian immor- 
tality — this man has at command, whatever 
his material environment, whether he be rich 
or poor in this world's goods, the basis of 
highest moral heroism. 

Nothing more clearly disproves the Social- 
istic claim that material abundance is essential 
to good character than the multitudes of sweet 
Christian homes among the world's humble 
people. Every pastor of large experience 
knows that among the poor are unnumbered 
homes idyllic in domestic virtue, homes inspired 
and made beautiful by the cheer of high re- 
ligious faith and hope, homes whose members 
hold to life's central convictions, and face 
life's duties and conflicts with the fidelity and 
heroism of the soldier. 

When Saint James would rebuke those who 
toadied to the rich, but who despised the poor, 
he taught that they should be no respecter 
of persons, asking, "Hath not God chosen the 
poor of this world rich in faith, and heirs of 
the kingdom which he hath promised to them 
that love him?" Christianity when truly 
experienced, whether among the rich or the 
poor of this world, always brings to its sub- 
jects social, intellectual, and moral values of 
the highest order. It has morally transformed 
and beautified more individual lives, has 



280 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 

brought to these lives a finer social and spir- 
itual uplift, has imparted to them a rich peace 
and a firm fortitude, has inspired them with 
the divinest motives and hopes both for this 
life and the life to come; and it has done all 
this in a measure never approached by all 
the religions and philosophies outside of itself 
in the world's history. 

Christianity, both by what it has accom- 
plished, by what it shows itself capable of 
doing, and by what it pledges itself to do, to 
meet the moral needs of all individuals and 
on all planes of human need, presents a history 
which calls for unanimous commendation by 
the pragmatic jury. 



X 

THE PRAGMATIC TEST 

(concluded) 



Plenteous grace with thee is found, 

Grace to cover all my sin: 
Let the healing streams abound; 

Make and keep me pure within. 
Thou of life the fountain art, 

Freely let me take of thee: 
Spring thou up within my heart, 

Rise to all eternity. 

— Charles Wesley. 

Christianity alone has shown that, on the one hand, it 
meets the needs of the soul of man as no other religion 
does, and that, on the other hand, it can adapt itself in so 
doing to varying conditions as no other can. It appears 
now as the only religion that can properly claim universality. 
— Principal Alfred Ernest Garvie. 

When I go down to the grave I can say, like so many 
others, "I have finished my day's work," but I cannot say, 
"I have finished my life." My work will begin again next 
morning. — Victor Hugo. 

Looked at from the outside we are animals like the other 
animals, having the human form, indeed, and yet subject 
to the same general laws as the animal world — birth and 
death, hunger and pain, labor and weariness. But our 
Christian faith holds that this is only the outward appear- 
ance, not the inward, spiritual fact. We are now the chil- 
dren of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be, 
but we know that when he shall appear we shall be like 
him, for we shall see him as he is. And thus our life is 
transformed. W r e are not simply the highest in the animal 
world, we are also and more essentially children of the 
Highest, made in his image likewise, and to go on further- 
more with him; made, as the old catechism had it, to glorify 
God and to enjoy him forever, growing evermore into his 
likeness and into ever-deepening sympathy and fellowship 
with the eternal as we go on through the unending years, 
until we are "filled with the fullness of God." This is the 
true evolution. Man is making; he is not yet made. 

"All about him shadow still, but, while the races flower 

and Fade, 
Prophet eyes may catch a glory slowly gaining on the 

Shade." 

— Professor Borden Parker Bowne, 



CHAPTER X 

THE PRAGMATIC TEST 

(concluded) 

4. Let our final inquiry be as to the suffi- 
ciency of Christianity to meet the needs of 
man's spiritual nature. If at the highest 
point of man's universal and spiritual needs 
Christianity should prove impotent, then there 
might well be hesitancy in recommending it 
to the individual or to the community. Fail- 
ure, indeed, at any point of spiritual need 
would disprove its claim as a supreme religion. 
Such failure has never been shown. Chris- 
tianity only and rightfully insists for the 
demonstration of its values upon such con- 
ditions as every science exacts for itself. The 
scientific demonstration is reached only by 
perfect conformity to its conditioning require- 
ments. Christianity works precisely in the 
same way. Christ said: "If any man will 
do his will, he shall know of the doctrine, 
whether it be of God." 

In the widest practical test, Christianity 
has abundantly proven itself equal to meeting 

233 



234 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 

all the moral needs of the individual and of 
the race. It is scientific in its application. It 
responds with absolute demonstration in all 
cases where its own conditions are faithfully 
met. It thus conforms to the highest demands 
of reason. Reason accepts, and confidently 
bases its conclusions upon, demonstrated facts. 
Christianity openly and universally offers itself 
to the test of experience. On this plane it is 
thoroughly scientific in method. 

Christianity works in perfect harmony with 
the mental and moral constitution of man. 
It neither seeks the elimination nor suppression 
of any normal human faculty. It takes man's 
mental and moral constitution just as it is, 
illuminating the reason, purifying the motives, 
energizing the moral faculties, and quickening 
purpose for the quest of a new life. Thus, 
while furnishing in itself the superlative moral 
and spiritual ideals, it also appropriates and 
utilizes religious truth from whatever sources. 
While it makes immeasurable moral advance 
over any other religious system, it is never 
found in antagonism to the highest moral 
sense of the race. It makes perfect appeal 
to the universal religious nature of mankind. 
Its conditions have been tested by repre- 
sentatives of all races, and among no people 
have they been found to fail in fulfillment 



THE PRAGMATIC TEST 235 

of promise. As no philosophy, no science, no 
other religious faith in the world's history, 
Christianity has experimentally demonstrated 
its power to satisfy the deepest spiritual needs 
of universal man. And if on this level it suc- 
ceeds, it must be accepted as satisfying the 
most crucial test by which its values can be 
challenged. 

There never was a time perhaps when in 
candid philosophical thought the paramount 
claims of man's spiritual nature were so clearly 
recognized as now. As wonderful and as 
fruitful as may be his intellectual genius, this 
is far from the greatest thing about man. 
His spiritual nature furnishes the far higher 
mark of his kinship with the Divine. The 
human intellect may make itself athletic in 
grappling with the problems of nature, but 
there is a hunger in the human spirit which 
can be satisfied with nothing less than the 
life of God in the soul. It is coming more 
and more clearly to be discerned that man 
as an individual, and man socially, never 
comes to his best, to his noblest self, save when 
his life is directed by regenerative motives 
from within. This alone is salvation, this 
alone is the secret of most worthful character. 

There is a legitimacy in material satisfactions. 
It is a good thing to be well fed and well clothed. 



236 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 

It is pleasant to be housed in capacious, well- 
appointed, and artistic homes. It is a good 
thing to be in command of sufficient means and 
material appliances to meet the physical con- 
veniences of life. Christianity does not extol 
poverty as having intrinsic virtue in itself. 
It does bring unearthly cheer and inspirations 
to multitudes whose lot is that of poverty. 
Neither, on the other hand, does it deny 
attainment of exalted virtues to those who are 
rich in this world's goods. The supreme diffi- 
culty in the situation is that the nearby appeal 
to human nature stands at the door of the 
senses. The demand for physical satisfaction 
is imperious. It asserts itself from our earliest 
history. The multitudes, it may be said 
human nature in general, are under constant 
and powerful temptation to seek life's chief 
satisfactions from material sources. This 
temptation has asserted itself well-nigh un- 
checked in many periods of history. Many 
have installed materialism as a chief good. 
Luxury has held riot in high places. 

The present, of all periods in history, comes 
nearest to being an era of universal knowl- 
edge. Science, art, an omnipresent press, all 
are lending themselves to a world-democracy 
of intelligence. Nature, in unprecedented meas- 
ure, is yielding her native treasures to the 



THE PRAGMATIC TEST 237 

increase of human wealth. Vast capitalistic 
combinations are developing industrial pro- 
ductivity beyond all the dreams of our fathers. 
While intelligence and real culture were never 
so widespread, it is also true that wealth and 
its consequent luxury were never so prevalent 
in the world as to-day. The world itself was 
never so attractive as now. Materialism, with 
whatever refinements it may keep company, 
puts a mighty lure upon the age. The multi- 
tudes, seeing the fatness and the sleekness, 
the revel of appliance and plenty, enjoyed by 
the rich, are under exceptional temptation to 
believe that the world of sense and of pleasure 
is, after all, the world chiefly to be sought. 
The canker of this temptation has eaten deeply 
into the life of the wayfaring masses. It is 
doubtless true that the laborer never received 
such compensation for his toil as now. He 
himself lives a life of greater plenty, a life 
nearer to the borders of luxury, than any of 
his predecessors. But the wide exploitation of 
wealth which he sees around him has made 
him the most discontented laborer of the ages. 
He has caught the material infection. He has 
accepted the belief that if he himself could 
only be the possessor of wealth, life too with 
him would be supremely well. 

The wide absorption of the age in pursuit 



238 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 

of material satisfactions makes it an age diffi- 
cult of spiritual appeal. The phenomenal 
development of human power over natural 
forces, the harnessing of these forces for man's 
service, and the consequent successful achieve- 
ment of huge material enterprises — all this 
has immensely contributed to divert man's 
attention from himself to the world of external 
nature. Nature, through science and invention, 
has so lavishly laid down her wealth at the 
feet of man as to confuse his vision. The 
material and outward, with their blinding 
glamour, have bulked so large as for the time 
being, at least, to suspend his synthesis of 
values. The age has vaulted into the saddle 
and rider and hounds together have plunged 
into the wilderness in pursuit of the game — 
Material Success. 

This insanity of materialism is perhaps a 
part of the inevitable price which this age 
must pay before it can enter upon a new 
spiritual era. No age ever had on so wide a 
scale, and with such prodigal stocks, so great 
opportunity for testing the utmost values which 
a pure materialism can contribute to human 
life. Modern material wealth has mustered a 
more brilliant revel, and has spread before its 
guests a far more sumptuous banquet, than 
were ever possible to any preceding age. But 



THE PRAGMATIC TEST 239 

the after satiety and disgust of the revel are 
proving the same as from all like experiments. 
In all history the guests have risen from the 
sating feasts of materialism only to realize 
that they have been feasted at a Circe's ban- 
quet. Materialism, with its attendant luxuries, 
has always brought about the intellectual and 
moral decadence of the people, has been a 
foremost promoter of the disintegration of 
civilization itself. The trend of present-day 
materialism proves no exception to the historic 
rule. 

'' Man's material life was never so immense, 
its achievements never so marvelous, its wealth 
never so bewildering, as now. But, in it all, 
there is no lesson clearer than its utter im- 
potence to bring supreme satisfactions to human 
life. The vast materialistic resources of the age 
have utterly failed alike to morally buttress 
civilization, to install honesty in the business 
world, to furnish worthy ideals to society, or 
to satisfy the conscious and deeper needs of 
the human soul. The charges of graft and of 
bribery in political life, of injustice and dis- 
honesty in business relations, the menace of 
immorality and divorce in circles of wealth 
and of privilege, were never more rife than now. 
The human soul awakes to learn anew the 
lesson that all this bulk and show of material- 



240 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 

istic resource is powerless to feed its deeper 
hunger, or to minister to its larger life. The 
soul's true citizenship can be realized only 
in the realm of the spiritual. It is made for 
a career larger than can be confined within 
material stagings. It inflicts upon itself dis- 
inheritance and banishment when it elects to 
remain aloof from divine fellowships. 

This sketch attempts no complete picture. 
It only aims, however imperfectly, to give a true 
indication of the nature and effects of a pure 
materialism in its relations to life and character. 
It would betray a grossly imperfect as well as 
unjust measurement of the age to deny the 
large wealth of sane moral judgment and of 
noble spiritual character which inhere in its 
life. Probably in its aggregate life no age in 
history has ever been so rich in redemptive 
moral agencies as the present. A highly 
significant indication is in the fact that, even 
within a generation, a materialistic philosophy 
which had been largely domesticated in pop- 
ular thought, has given place in circles of 
correct thinking to a philosophy of the spirit. 
Error is a stubborn thing. One of the sad 
facts of history is that when it has once be- 
come rooted it takes a long time to eliminate 
the poison of a vicious philosophy from 
the popular mind. A false materialism may 



THE PRAGMATIC TEST 241 

still find clamorous utterance among the 
street and mob orators, but it is safe to say 
that it no longer has any footing in competent 
philosophic thought. 

It is significant that both Eucken and 
Bergson, two men who easily rank among the 
foremost of living philosophers, each in his 
own way, hold as basic and central a spiritual 
view of the universe. These men have not 
traveled to their conclusions by the same path. 
Nor are their views identical. Indeed, as is 
true of all, even the greatest, thinkers, these 
two men, wondrous and wide as is their vision, 
are but provincial explorers in the fields of 
infinite reality. But the fact of real signifi- 
cance is that their philosophies alike take 
initiative from spiritual, and not from ma- 
terialistic, bases. 

Eucken, in incisive and eloquent terms, por- 
trays the moral failure of the modern material- 
istic civilization, with all its seemingly limitless 
resourcefulness, to meet the needs of man's 
higher nature. He declares that "Modern life, 
in particular, with its liberation of every force, 
has brought to the surface so much that is 
impure, unedifying, and unworthy, and has 
placed so clearly before our eyes the pettiness 
and unreality of a merely human culture, that 
it becomes continually more and more hope- 



242 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 

less to obtain a satisfying type of life upon this 
basis and to provide human existence with a 
meaning and a value. It is being increasingly 
felt that there is something in man which this 
immanent type of life does not bring out, and 
that this undeveloped element is something 
indispensable, perhaps the best of all!" 

Eucken cogently insists that the only ulti- 
mate normal life of man, that life for which 
the best that is now within him constitutes 
both a prophecy and a demand, that life 
which alone furnishes the real key and meaning 
of man's being, can be realized only by "a 
transforming spiritual culture." Eucken, it is 
to be remembered, is not in the usual sense 
an orthodox Christian. But, negatively, with 
all his knowledge of historic thought, he is 
able to present no source whence the spiritual 
regeneration of the world shall come save 
Christianity. Toward Christianity itself this 
great mind utters no pedantic or flippant 
views. He looks upon Christ as an historic 
Character who has changed the face of the 
world. In his book Can We Still Be Chris- 
tians? is this passage: "Our answer is not only 
that we can be, but that we must. But we 
can only be Christians if Christianity is recog- 
nized as a world-historical movement still in 
flux, if it is shaken out of its ecclesiastical 



THE PRAGMATIC TEST 243 

vitrification and placed upon a broader basis. 
In this lies the task of our time and the hope 
of the future." 

This passage contains the very philosophy of 
Eucken concerning the spiritual adequacy of 
Christianity for meeting the moral needs of 
mankind. On the one hand, he accepts Chris- 
tianity as the supreme realization of the spir- 
itual ideal; but, on the other hand, he seems 
to fear that the very life and mission of Chris- 
tianity itself are imperiled under their present 
forms of expression. I cannot but think that 
it marks a well-nigh fatal limitation even upon 
Eucken's grasp of the situation that he con- 
founds, or at least seems to confound, the 
ecclesiastical forms of Christianity with the 
genius and spirit of Christianity itself. Be- 
tween the two concepts there may be, and 
doubtless is, a world-wide difference. Ecclesi- 
astical interpretations, in large numbers, may 
be thoroughly superseded and become as 
worthless as an outworn garment. 

The spirit of Christianity is cosmic, ever- 
creative, always preceding, and always remedial 
to, the developing moral needs of the race. 
It is itself the efficient and inspiring soul of 
the world's moral and spiritual progress. The 
vital processes of Christianity do not need 
revision; they do not need defense. They work 



244 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 

like a leaven in the growths of civilization, 
constantly securing for themselves a broaden- 
ing application to man's industrial, educational, 
social, and moral life. Man's intelligence needs 
to be continuously quickened and enlarged, that 
he may have even a proximate appreciation 
of the vitalizing and increasing functions of 
Christianity in human affairs. If this view — 
perhaps he would not give it place — were 
added to Eucken's conception, then he would 
stand as a foremost witness to the complete 
adequacy of Christianity for meeting the moral 
needs of the world. 

I have sought in this discussion, though very 
f ragmentarily, to secure a fair and representative 
impression of the attitude of present-day phil- 
osophy toward the main question of our pur- 
suit. The approved philosophy of the age 
plants itself on spiritual and not on materialistic 
bases. This philosophy clearly recognizes the 
supreme dignity, value and needs of man's 
spiritual nature. It recognizes, as in the case 
of Eucken, that Christianity, more perfectly 
than any other known system, furnishes the 
environment, the stimuli, the moral supports, 
both for the deepest needs and the highest 
developments of the spiritual life. Outside of 
revelation itself we could hardly ask for more 
satisfactory testimony as to Christian values. 



THE PRAGMATIC TEST 245 

Let us come back, then, to listen finally to 
the voice of Christian experience. In over- 
whelming consensus this voice testifies that 
for the penitent sinner is divine forgiveness; 
in place of the sense of guilt there may be the 
joy of pardon; for the will weakened and im- 
paired by sinful habit, moral renovation and 
spiritual reenforcement; the installment within 
of new affections, desires, and purposes; a new 
and wondrous consciousness of reconciliation 
and fellowship with God; a newly awakened 
love for, and moral interest in, the welfare of 
one's fellows. A man when thus made a new 
creature in Christ Jesus is moved by a Christ- 
like desire for a like experience for all his 
fellows. He says in his new-found joy: 

"O, that all the world might taste and see 
The riches of His grace; 
The arms of love that compass me 
Would all mankind embrace." 

We have seen in this discussion, and from 
many standpoints, how the incoming of the 
Christian life inspires in the human breast 
the spirit of good wall and of benevolent pur- 
pose toward all men. The evidence is universal 
and overwhelming that the spirit of Chris- 
tianity, tested by its own intrinsic quality, is a 
power which works always and only in the 
highest interests of human welfare. Judged by 



246 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 

its fruits, Christianity, in its very nature, 
must be counted worthy of the highest prag- 
matic sanction- 

5. As a final thought, though one which 
cannot be considered as merely incidental to 
the subject, Christianity not only outstrips 
but climaxes the profoundest human philos- 
ophies in its confident proclamation of immor- 
tality. The dream of immortality has through- 
out the ages haunted the most luminous minds 
of the race. But Christianity positively crowns 
immortality as a regal and superlative fact in 
the universe of moral being. The fruits of 
immortality as an attained estate cannot, of 
course, be pragmatically tested. But immor- 
tality as a faith, in its inspiring and regulative 
power over human character and conduct, 
makes legitimate appeal to the pragmatic 
judgment. 

It must be sadly admitted that in many 
thoughtful circles the belief in immortality is 
not as vivid now, not as confident, as in some 
previous times. This situation is accounted 
for largely by new and absorbing preoccupa- 
tions which have taken possession of modern- 
world thought. A new world of material 
wealth has been thrust upon the human vision. 
Science has challenged modern thought with a 
thousand baffling questions, many of them 



THE PRAGMATIC TEST 247 

carrying implications of negation against the 
continuous survival of the soul. As Professor 
Fosdick has said: 

Another reason for the decline of emphasis upon 
the importance of the life to come is not so creditable. 
... In the present age this life has been made vivid 
and interesting in an unexampled way. Old isola- 
tions have been overcome, so that the whole world 
is now the province of any mind that chooses to be 
cosmopolitan, and rapidity of communication has 
made possible world-wide enterprises on such a scale 
as no previous age has ever known. New knowledge 
has consumed the thoughts of men, and new avenues 
of wealth have engaged their ambitions, until the 
contemplation of eternal destiny has paled before 
the immediate brilliance of this present world. For 
men are like auditoriums; they can hold so many 
occupants and no more; and when the seats are 
filled and even the "Standing Room Only" sign has 
been removed, the next comer, though he be a 
prince, must cool his heels upon the curb. The 
minds of men have been preempted by the immediate 
and fascinating interests of this vigorous, exciting 
age. The fact is not so much that they through 
reasoned disbelief have discarded faith in immor- 
tality, as that through preoccupation they have lost 
interest in anything beyond the grave. 

Preoccupation does not annul facts. A man 
in a mood of preoccupation may step off the 
edge of a precipice, but the result is none the 
less fatal. Pleasure-seekers who ride on the 
swift river may be all unmindful of the ocean. 
But the current not less surely bears them on 



248 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 

toward the heaving tides and the roaring 
breakers of the not-distant sea. Immortality 
may remain true though all men should forget 
the fact. Grant all the mysteries that shadow 
to the natural reason the question of immor- 
tality, weigh all arguments which materialism 
can urge against the fact, still the moral reason 
forever asserts that if we live in an honest 
universe, man must be immortal. 

It is not a little significant that many of the 
greatest authorities in modern science not only 
find no insuperable obstacles to faith in im- 
mortality, but they marshal the very facts 
of science itself in support of such faith. "The 
fact that men like Sir Oliver Lodge in natural 
science, Professor William James in psychol- 
ogy, Dr. William Osier in medicine, have 
thought it reasonable to cherish hopes of 
immortality, suggests at once that while im- 
mortality may not be proved, it certainly has 
not been disproved." Professor John Fiske 
boldly says, "The* materialistic assumption that 
the life of the soul ends with the life of the 
body is perhaps the most colossal instance of 
baseless assumption that is known to the 
history of philosophy." Further, in giving 
attention to the argument against immortality 
as based upon the assumption of the mind's 
dependence upon the body, he says: "How 



THE PRAGMATIC TEST 249 

much does this argument amount to as against 
the belief that the soul survives the body? 
The answer is, Nothing! absolutely nothing! 
It not only fails to disprove the validity of 
the belief, but it does not raise even the slight- 
est prima facie presumption against it." 

An effective answer to skepticism of immor- 
tality, be it scientific or otherwise, would be to 
grant its premise, and then to pursue its logic 
to the end. This logic would turn the uni- 
verse into a graveyard. It would veil all the 
skies of human hope in darkness and sterility. 
If science teaches anything, it is that nature 
through incalculable aeons, and at infinite 
costs, has wrought as with unswerving purpose 
toward the great objective known as a human 
personality. This is nature's goal, beyond 
which it seems powerless to advance. What 
is the logic of the theory that death ends all? 
It means that Isaiah and Socrates, Jesus and 
Paul, Dante, Shakespeare, and Luther, that all 
the brilliant constellations of human genius 
lifting themselves above the horizons of history, 
that all these were born after the birth-pangs 
of countless ages only, like fireflies, to shine 
for a brief moment, and then to be extinguished 
forever in ray less night. This logic turns the 
universe into a moral chaos, and makes of 
human life itself an inexplicable and mocking 



250 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 

enigma. The very thought is intolerable to 
all noble minds. 

Professor Huxley, when consciously approach- 
ing old age, wrote to John Morley: 

The great thing one has to wish for as time goes 
on is vigor as long as one lives, and death as soon as 
vigor dies, It is a curious thing that I find my dis- 
like to the thought of extinction increasing as I get 
older and nearer to the goal. It flashes over me at 
all sorts of times with a sort of horror that in 1900 
I shall probably know no more of what is going on 
than I did in 1800. I had sooner be in hell a good 
deal — at any rate, in one of the upper circles, where 
the climate and the company are not too trying. I 
wonder if you are plagued in this way. 

Nor is there any final satisfaction in the 
Positivistic teaching that men live in the deeds 
of good which they bequeath to posterity; 
that thus they are immortal in the sense that 
their own good deeds live on in the enrichment 
of subsequent lives. In the end it is all the 
same. We come finally, at least so far as man 
is concerned, to universal extinction, to a worn- 
out and lifeless universe. 

The rational indications of the undying life 
of the human soul are many. It may be 
soberly and measuredly said that not all the 
skeptical philosophy of the ages has been able 
to neutralize the force of these indications. 
As against all arguments, it may be said that 



THE PRAGMATIC TEST 251 

the rational constitution of the soul carries in 
itself the instinctive and inseparable belief in 
its own immortality. Christianity comes to 
reenforce and to illuminate these native prompt- 
ings by conceptions of infinite value. The 
Christian conception is far other than simply 
meaning a continued existence. It calls for an 
infinite program for the soul's moral develop- 
ment, for its achievements and attainments. 
It means space and opportunity in which the 
human individuality, that last consummate 
product of nature's dateless efforts, is to find 
forever ceaseless development of its godlike 
potentialities. This program inspired into hu- 
man convictions transforms life into a school 
of moral heroism. It evens up the moral 
opportunities of being. It goes far with the 
poor and the unprivileged toward compensating 
for what often seems the unjust, and even the 
cruel, inequalities of this earthly life. 

Many a man here does not seem to have a 
fair chance. Here is one in a factory exhaust- 
ing his physical energy for every working day 
in the year in a most monotonous and un- 
developing employment. There is the poor 
seamstress supporting herself, and, it may be, 
her fatherless children, by giving herself morn- 
ing, noon, and night to the needle until the 
doleful "Song of the Shirt" works itself into 



252 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 

her very nerve and fiber. But this man carries 
in his mental constitution all undeveloped and 
ungratified the faculties of the philosopher. 
The poor seamstress has lying within her the 
latent faculties of poet and prophetess. Physi- 
cal limitations are for the present putting 
impassable barriers up around these souls. 
Their opportunity is yet to come. Immor- 
tality will furnish the limitless landscape and 
the theater in which they shall yet develop 
their powers to the full. 

Immortality, after the Christian type, alone 
furnishes real scope for the complete ful- 
fillment of that which is now prophetic in all 
men. The strongest man at present is rel- 
atively infantile. The man of largest vision is, 
at best, nearsighted. Most men are at present 
hedged in by barriers of inheritance, of narrow 
education, of untrained faculties, of skeptical 
habit, all of which bar them from widest 
outlook upon the universe of their real possi- 
bilities. We are provincial in our habits. 
Our beliefs are narrow. We are like dwellers 
in caves by the seashore rather than explorers 
of the boundless deep. The wings of our souls 
are not yet trained for familiar flights through 
the starry spaces. The sons of God, taber- 
nacling here in the flesh, have not yet found 
their spiritual vision. The best are as they 



THE PRAGMATIC TEST 253 

who look through a glass darkly. God's more 
glorious universe, the spiritual, has as yet 
been revealed only in prophecy, in types, in 
occasional experiences and revelations which 
have come to elect souls in mountain-top 
experiences. It will not always be so. For 
those who toil a day of emancipation will 
come. The drudgery of life will be lifted away, 
and the soul, with fully awakened powers, 
will come to the larger universe of realization. 
None can as yet measure or describe the 
meaning or the opportunities of the heritage 
of immortality for the sons of God. We are 
living in a physical universe practically infinite 
in its dimensions and resources. In the sphere 
of intellectual possibilities the immortality of 
the soul is paralleled only by the immensity 
of worlds — worlds all of which are under the 
common sway of God's scepter, and the study 
of which it might require an eternity to ex- 
haust. The great counterpart of this truth is 
that man has hardly as yet begun to discover 
the real wealth of his own faculties, of his 
own possibilities. He shall yet develop the 
art of discovering every hidden fact of the 
universe. He shall develop power both to 
capture and master all truth which may min- 
ister to his own enrichment. But lying along- 
side these great truths is that other inevitable 



254 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 

fact that every child of God must finally have 
full opportunity for self -development. 

But, however immeasurable the intellectual 
possibilities of the immortal life, we may not 
forget that the material universe, immense 
and marvelous as it is, is but secondary in 
its values. The real glory of God's greatness 
is moral. The crowning destiny which he 
purposes for man is moral. The highest pur- 
suits and enjoyments of the sons of God will 
forever be in the realm of the spiritual. And 
if God has overwhelmed our minds by the 
discoveries he has made of himself in the 
physical universe, what infinitely more glorious 
moral and spiritual revelations may not his 
sons expect? While eternity moves on, God 
will forever press new revelations of his own 
exhaustless glories upon the unfolding vision 
and receptivity of his children. 

In the light of most saintly and heroic 
living, it has been abundantly proven that 
the Christian conception of immortality fur- 
nishes the loftiest and most inspiring motives 
for the shaping of character and the govern- 
ment of life. 

Death is the chilliness that precedes the dawn; 
We shudder for a moment, then awake 
In the broad sunshine of another life. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 

The list of publications herein given represents books, 
all of which, in more or less measure, have been consulted 
in the preparation of this volume. 

A Working Faith Harris Franklin Rail 

& ( ffi^3£K2<?SS By } • William Newt - Clarke 

Book of Martyrs Foxe 

Essays J. Brierley 

Browning's Poems. 

Can We Still Be Christians? 1 

Problem of Human Life \ Rudolf Eucken 

Main Currents of Modern Thought J 

Christianity and Labor William Muir 

SHSS^faSoS*} Wa,ter R-chenbusch 

cStrig JLXcaTfsWs } He ^ Barcla ^ Swete 

Dictionary of the Bible James Hastings 

Emerson's Essays. 

Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Edward Gibbon 

History of Methodism, Vol. I Abel Stevens 

History of Christianity John F. Hurst 

Hymnals (Various Church). 

History of European Morals W. E. H. Lecky 

Jesus Christ and the Social "1 

Je^ Christ and the Chris- \ • Francis Greenwood Peabody 
tian Character J 

Mysticism and Modern Life John Wright Buckham 

My Belief R. F. Horton 

Personality 

The Essence of Religion I t> j t» i t» 

Studies in Christianity \ Borden Parker Bowne 

The Immanence of God j 

Religions of Authority Auguste Sabatier 

SP Sn U turies ef ° rme ^ ° f tLe XVI and XVH } Rufus M - Jones 
The Christian Religion J. Scott Lidgett 

257 



258 BIBLIOGRAPHY 

The Philosophy of the Christian ") 

Th^Hace of Christ in Modern \ Andrew Martin F airbairn 

Theology J 

The Rise of the Mediaeval Church . . Alexander Clarence Flick 

The Chief Corner Stone W. T. Davison 

The Church in the Roman Empire W. M. Ramsay 

The Assurance of Immortality Harry Emerson Fosdick 

The Working Faith of a Liberal Theo- 
logian T. Rhonnda Williams 

The Romance of Preaching Charles Silvester Home 

The Varieties of Religious Experience William James 

The Psychology of the Christian Life . . Horace Emory Warner 

Theism and Humanism Arthur James Balfour 

The Reconstruction of the Church Paul Moore Strayer 

The Three Religious Leaders of Oxford . . . . S. Parkes Cadman 
The Conflict of Religions in the Early Ro- 1 

man Empire > . . T. R. Glover 

The Christian Tradition and Its Verification J 

The Gospel of Good Will. . . William DeWitt Hyde 

The Immanence of Christ in Modern 

Thought Frederick R. Swan 

The Quest of the Infinite Benjamin A. Millard 

The Spiritual Life \ Geoiw A Cop 

The Religion of a Mature Mind / George A. L,oe 

The New World Religion Josiah Strong 

The Indwelling Spirit T. W. Davison 

The Philosophy of Spirit John Snaith 

The Rise of Modern Religious 

Ideas Andrew Cushman McGiff ert 

Tennyson's Poems. 

Pragmatism William James 

Principles of Pragmatism H. Heath Bawden 

Psychology of Religious Experience . . Edward Scribner Ames 
Meaning of God in Human Expe- 
rience William Ernest Hocking 

In addition to the foregoing cited works, I have consulted 
several articles in the Cyclopaedia Britannica, as also in the 
Cyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, edited by James Hastings. 
I may volunteer the conviction that the latter work is in- 
dispensable to any well-furnished ministerial library. 



INDEX 



INDEX 



Agnosticism, large contin- 
gency of mind character- 
ized by, 11 

Ames, Edward P., cited, 46 

Anaesthesia, state of, 44 

Animosities, tribal, long 
survival of, 76 

Arnold, Matthew, a be- 
liever in moral law, 32 

Art, service of, to world-de- 
mocracy of intelligence, 
236 

Augustine, referred to, 61; 
character and conver- 
sion of, 94-96; life lived 
by, 97 

Aurelius, Marcus, quoted, 
150; classed with Moses, 
151; quoted, 152 



Ballard, Dr. Frank, state- 
ments from pen of, 16 

Balling, Peter, quoted, 42 

Bashford, Bishop James 
W., cited, 151; referred 
to, 181 

Begbie, Harold, referred to, 
128 

Believer, the graces in life 
of, 148 

Bible, the supreme utter- 



ance of the highest re- 
ligion, 38; criticism of, 

73 
"Birth-song of Evangelical 

Revival," by Charles 

Wesley, 159 
Bisseker, Professor H., 

quoted, 99 
Bowne, Borden P., cited, 

46; quoted, 91; referred 

to, 197; pragmatism of, 

198; quoted, 214, 232 
Boxer Rebellion, fortitude 

of Chinese Christians in, 

155 
Brainerd, David, work of, 

181 
Brierley, J., quoted, 42, 64, 

74, 106 
Browning, Robert, quoted, 

58, 59, 60; cited, 128 
Bunyan, John, voice of in- 

suppressible, 156 
Business, the inner motive 

of, 78 
Butler, William, referred 

to, 181 

Cadman, Dr. S. Parkes, 

quoted, 205, 207 
Calvin, John, referred to, 

130 



261 



262 



INDEX 



Cartwright, Peter, referred 
to, 35, 36 

Cary, William, work of, 
180 

Celsus, complaint of, 
against Christians, 122; 
view of, concerning 
Christian converts, 123; 
his explanation of firm- 
ness of early martyrs, 
162 

Chalmers, of New Guinea, 
referred to, 181 

Character, Christian, 107; 
study of claims for, 110; 
New Testament stand- 
ards of, 115; testimony 
of, 141 

Character, factors entering 
into, 108; the outcome 
of cumulative forces, 
109; biblical ideals of 
godly, 112 

Children, valuable recruits 
of the Church, 136 

Christ, pragmatic rule of, 
13; mission of, 61; great- 
ness of, 62; a great dis- 
turber of the traditions 
of his times, 72; growth 
of followers of, 120; 
teaching of, 165; King- 
dom of, seemingly of 
slow development, 
169; the incomprehen- 
sible and immeasurable 
character of history, 
172; activity of, 174; 



scope of mission of, 183; 
quoted, 233; a Character 
who has changed the 
face of the world, 242 

Christian, the, Christ's 
disciple, 65; duties of, 
223 

Christians, austere purity 
of morals of, 121; early 
history of marvelous, 
122; Chinese in Boxer 
Rebellion, 155 

Christian Church, situa- 
tion within, 25 

Christian experience, ideal, 
how regarded, 23; prim- 
itive, nature of, 30; evi- 
dential values of, 103; 
assessing the values of, 
138; phenomena of, 142; 
Cause and Source of 
considered, 143; charac- 
terized by fortitude, 
154; voice of, 245; Chris- 
tian ideal for individual 
welfare, inquiry con- 
cerning, 215; Christian 
standard, ideal, dis- 
cussed, 78, 79 

Christian service, 167 

Christian truth, sum of, 
24; narrow horizon as- 
signed to, 28 

Christianity, how rated by 
Nietzsche, 10; hate tow- 
ard, 11; systematic oppo- 
sition to, 12, 13; not fear- 
ful of comparison with 



INDEX 



268 



other forces, 13; opposi- 
tion to encountered by 
Saint Paul, 15; charac- 
terized by both faults 
and failures, 15; without 
a rival in good accom- 
plished, 15; ready to be 
judged by its fruits, 16; 
diverse views in, 25; re- 
ligious expression out- 
side of, 27; a religion of 
the spirit, 65; its mis- 
sion to save the indi- 
vidual soul, 67; the 
Church's conception of 
function of on earth en- 
larged, 75; vision of to- 
day, 76; spirit of too 
narrowly measured, 80; 
spread of over Roman 
empire, 98; reforms of, 
116; cherished tradi- 
tions rebuked by, 118; 
Jewish opposition to, 
119; early life of tested 
by official fury, 120; 
power of to transform, 
123; state of Roman 
world at time of advent 
of, 200 ; though outlawed, 
morally invincible, 201; 
wickedness denounced 
by, 202; divine life of re- 
asserted, 204; divine 
character of power by 
pragmatic philosophy, 
212; great revivals of 
responded to by the 



poor, 228; moral needs 
of all individuals met 
by, 230; sufficiency of to 
meet needs of man's 
spiritual nature, 233; 
not antagonistic to moral 
sense of race, 234; spirit 
of, 243; a power which 
works always in the 
highest interests of hu- 
man welfare, 245; a 
final thought concerning, 
246 

Christianity and the New 
Age, quotation from, 183 

Church, the, organized 
labor living in practical 
divorce from, 11, 12; 
general trend of thought 
in, 12; treated with neg- 
lect, 13; importance of 
membership in, 34; in 
possession of revelation 
of Christ's character, 39 ; 
human leadership re- 
quired by, 40; things 
emphasized by, 129; 
great scandal suffered 
by, 170; adverse criti- 
cism of noted, 173; char- 
acterized by a spirit of 
charity, 175; the great- 
est human organism cre- 
ated by Christianity, 
203; not a synonym for 
Christianity, 204 

Church of England, spir- 



264 



INDEX 



itual life in, at time of 
Wesleyan Revival, 205 

Church of Rome, arrogant 
claims of, 216 

Civilization, fruits yielded 
to, 15; God's larger dia- 
gram of, 221 

Clarke, Dr. William New- 
ton, mental law stated 
by, 9; quoted, 42, 86 

Corporations, object of or- 
ganization, 219 

Coe, George A., cited, 46 

Cook, Joseph, quoted, 84 

"Conversion," the term dis- 
cussed, 85, 86; narra- 
tives of Old Testament 
relating to, 87 ; New Tes- 
tament treatment of, 87; 
processes of, 88; reality 
of attested by millions 
of witnesses, 90; a moral 
miracle in history, 98; 
evidential values of, 99; 
remarkable instance of, 
126 

Creed, formulated, not dis- 
paraged, 29 ; exalted 
above character, 31 

Creeds, many men ex- 
cluded by, 28; worthy of 
historic honor, 30; neces- 
sities of ages which gave 
them birth, 30; not 
necessarily immortal, 31 

Criticism, true function of, 
71; acceptance of new r 
views demanded by, 72 



Cross, preaching of con- 
sidered foolishness, 118 
Culture, widespread, 237 

Dante, cited, 249 

Davison, Dr. W. T., quoted, 
64; cited, 100 

Denominations, Protestant, 
dogmatic and narrow 
qualities of, 77; divisive 
sectarianism in, becom- 
ing a thing of increasing 
abhorrence, 77 

Denominationalism, one 
weakness of, 31 

Despotism, motive of, 217 

Doddridge, Philip, conver- 
sion hymn by, 161 

Duke of Bavaria, exhorta- 
tion to John Huss, 154 

Ehrhardt, Professor Chris- 
tian Eugene, quoted, 214 

Elijah, cited, 55 

Emerson, quoted, 32, 137 

Epictetus, referre" to, 150; 
classed with Moses, 151 

Era, present, one of uni- 
versal knowledge, 236 

Erasmus, quoted, 74 

"Eternal life," emphasized 
as a thing of quality, 
163 

Evangelical thought, duty 
of, 38 

Evolution, perfected the- 
ory of, 57 

Eucken, Rudolf, on reason, 



INDEX 



265 



48; indebtedness of age 
to, 79; referred to, 80; 
cited, 96; position of rel- 
ative to pragmatism, 
196; quoted, 197, 200; 
moral failure portrayed 
by, 241; quoted, 242; 
philosophy of, 243; re- 
ferred to, 244 

Europe, present state of, 
14 

Eusebius, quoted, 146 

Fairbairn, Andrew Martin, 
quoted, 22; quoted, 108 

Faith, nonevangelical, 28; 
indispensable handmaids 
of, 30 

Findlay, Dr. G. G., quoted, 
146 

Fiske, Professor John 
quoted, 168, 248 

Fortitude, Christian, 158 

Fosdick, Professor, quoted, 
247 

Fox, George, quoted, 51 

Francis of Assisi, trans- 
formation of, 180 

Garvie, Principal Alfred 
Ernest, quoted, 232 

Gibbon, not favorable to 
Christianity, 124 

Glover, Dr. T. R., quoted, 
125 

God, relations of, with the 
human soul, 9; revealed 
to men to-day, 39; the 



only answer to the in- 
finite in man, 49; has 
furnished object lessons 
of himself, 50; deals 
spiritually with all men, 
51; dealings of, in his- 
tory, 52; perfected world 
of, how characterized, 
53; redemptive purpose 
of, 56; not balked in his 
purpose, 56; exaltation 
of man central to his 
purpose, 62; the great 
Thinker, 68 ; voice of, de- 
mands ethical living, 78 

Gospel, the, announced by 
the angels, 147 

Government, benefits of, 
218; ultimate function 
of, 219 

Hadley, S. H., conversion 
of, described, 126-128 

Hall, Professor Thomas C, 
quoted, 11 

Harnack, quoted, 96 

Hebrews, the ancient, spir- 
itual genius of, 52; com- 
pared with Grecian con- 
temporaries, 53; states- 
manship of, a negligible 
quantity, 54; place in 
civilization must not be 
minified, 54; stands in 
moral center of drama 
of the world, 55 

"Historical orthodoxy," es- 
sentially Christian, 24 



266 



INDEX 



Holy Scriptures, the, con- 
tents of, 38 

Holy Spirit, the, 63; ac- 
cepted as God working in 
his world, 65; his mis- 
sion the same as that of 
Jesus Christ, QQ; offices 
of, 66; vital relation to 
man's being, 67; mental 
insight quickened by, 
74; deals with interests 
of human life on un- 
limited scale, 81; com- 
panionship of, 111; trans- 
forming and character- 
forming mission of con- 
sidered, 134-143; distinc- 
tive fruits of, 149, 162 

Hocking, William E., cited, 
46 

Home, Charles Silvester, 
quoted, 186 

Hugo, Victor, quoted, 232 

Human body, designated 
as "temple of the Holy 
Ghost/' 71 

Human soul, relations of, 
with God, 9 

Humanity a solidarity, 77 

Huss, John, referred to, 
130; fortitude of, 154; 
quoted, 155 

Huxley, Professor, quoted, 
250 

Hyde, Dr. William De 
Witt, reference to book 
by, 184 



Immortality, 252 

Individualism, the oppo- 
site of organization, 217 

Intellect, vital questions 
decided in court of, 68; 
does not yield all the 
criteria of truth, 69 

Intellectual culture, 
wrongly suspected of be- 
ing a foe to spirituality, 
73 

Isaiah, cited, 55, 151, 249 

James, William, indebted- 
ness to, acknowledged, 
17; quoted, 44; cited, 46; 
quoted, 84, 89; cited, 
125; quoted, 137, 152; 
referred to, 193; cited, 
248 

Jeremiah, referred to, 151 

Jesus Christ, the supreme 
fact of, 51; quoted, 90; 
his conception of the 
godly character, 113; 
quoted, 192 

John, Griffith, referred to, 
181 

John the Baptist, cited, 55 

Jones, Professor Maurice, 
quoted, 106 

Joy, a fruit of the Spirit, 
147; spoken of by Christ, 
159 



Kant, referred to, 49, 107; 
influenced by Stoical 



INDEX 



267 



ideals, 109; influence of, 

on modern thought, 217 
Kingdom, Christ's, nature 

of, 37 
Kingsley, Charles, cited, 44 
Knowledge, slow march of, 

57 
Knox, John, referred to, 

130 

Labor, organized, practi- 
cally divorced from the 
Church, 10, 11; accep- 
tance of materialistic 
guidance by, discussed, 
14 

Latimer, Hugh, quoted, 
155 

Laws, spiritual, ignorance 
of, 140 

Lecky, W. E. H., quoted, 
124, 176, 192, 212 

Lewis, Wilson S., referred 
to, 181 

Life, Christian, ethical 
quality of, 140 

Lincoln, Abraham, charac- 
ter of, 33; intellectual 
difficulties encountered 
by, 34 

Livingstone, David, re- 
ferred to, 181 

Lodge, Sir Oliver, cited, 
43, 248 

Lowell, J. R., quoted, 42; 
cited, 43 

Loyola, Ignatius, conver- 
sion of, 180 



Lucian, attitude of, toward 
Christians, 123 

Luther, Martin, doctrine 
taught by, 61; referred 
to, 94; lifted to a new 
level by a spiritual reve- 
lation, 131; cited, 249 

Mammon-god, widely wor- 
shiped in the age, 12 

Man, God's supreme coun- 
terpart in universe, 26; 
religious nature of, 27; 
faculties exercised by, 
47 ; moral constitution 
of, not a lie, 49 ; made for 
two relationships, 67; 
relations both individual 
and social, 67; endow- 
ment of intellectual fac- 
ulty of, 68; pre-emi- 
nently a social being, 75 ; 
to be a Christian the 
loftiest realization pos- 
sible to, 79; Christ's 
program for, 222; ma- 
terial life of, never so 
immense, 239 

Mankind, poor response of, 
to God's higher thought 
and purpose, 56 

Martyn, Henry, labors of, 
181 

Martyr, Justin, quoted, 122 

Martyrs, Christian, cour- 
age of, 164 

Material satisfaction, le- 
gitimacy of, 235 



268 



INDEX 



Materialism, harangues 
on, 11; present place of, 
scientific, 12; rests on 
the life of the age, 12; 
lure of, upon the age, 
237; effects of, in its re- 
lation to life and char- 
acter, 240 

Mathews, Shailer, quoted, 
186 

McArthur, Sir Alexander, 
quoted, 182 

McConnell, Bishop Francis 
J., quoted, 84 

Messengers, unsalaried, 
nescience and godless- 
ness taught by, 11 

Methodism, world-wide to- 
day, 211 

Militarism, Prussian, re- 
ferred to, 14 

Miner, Miss Luella, quoted, 
155 

Millard, Benjamin A., 
quoted, 22 

Mind, the, made for criti- 
cal investigation, 69; 
the Christian, a path- 
finder, 74 

Missions, Christian, motor- 
nerve of, 179 

Moral law, not a cheat, 49 

Moral wholeness, dis- 
cussed, 32 

Morbidity, mental, cause 
of, 72 

Morrison, Robert, work 
and patience of, 181 



Moses, cited, 55 

Motive, the real Christian, 

178 

Nature, laws of, absolutely 
reliable, 48 

Nature, treasures yielded 
by, 236 

Nelson, John, quoted, 156 

Nietzsche, philosophy of, 
10; death of in a mad- 
house, 14 

Non-Christian world, the, 
citizenship of divided 
into two general classes, 
13 

Oldham, Bishop W. F., 
quoted, 182 

Onesimus, plea of Paul in 
behalf of, 226 

Origen, referred to, 61; tes- 
timony of, 123; declara- 
tion by, 134 

Orthodoxy, intellectual, ar- 
raignment of, 31 

Osier, Dr. William, cited, 
248 

Pagan nations, general ref- 
erence to, 171 

Palmer, Ray, experience of 
in death, 162 

Parker, Edwin Wallace, 
referred to, 181 

Paton, in the South Sea 
Islands, referred to, 181 

Paul, Saint, cited, 55; 



INDEX 



269 



quoted, 62; referred to, 
97; declaration of, 111; 
discrimination made by, 
114; a man of fortitude, 
147; persecuted, 148; 
courage of under priva- 
tion and suffering, 164; 
the first Christian mis- 
sionary to the Gentile 
world, 180; cited, 249 

Peirce, Charles, referred 
to, 193 

Pentecostal revival, the, 
148 

Pessimism, a corrective of, 
171 

Phenomena, religious, 
frankest exploration in 
realms of, 24; recogni- 
tion of, 46 

Philosophy, Nietzsche's, 
defined, 10; materialis- 
tic, relegated to the 
past, 12; Nietzschean, 
genius of, 13; discussed, 
88; compelled to take 
note of religious history, 
97; socialistic philoso- 
phy, 224 ; present-day, 
244 

Positivistic teaching, 250 

Pragmatic test, the, 191; 
discussion of continued, 
215; discussion of con- 
tinued, 12, 33 

Pragmatism, as a distinct 
system, 193; discussed, 
194-198 



Press, alien, work of, 11; 
omnipresent, world-de- 
mocracy of intelligence 
advanced by, 236 

Processes, divine, erro- 
neous conclusions con- 
cerning, 29 

"Psychic sense, 5 ' consid- 
ered, 43; not identified 
with "spiritual sense," 
45 

Psychologists, protests en- 
tered by, 46 

Psychology, only one de- 
partment of philosophy, 
88; knowledge of needed 
by teachers and preach- 
ers, 89 



Race, the, constitution of 
as a whole, 52; infantile 
moral helplessness of, 
56; evolutionary pro- 
cesses of, 57; discussed, 
58 

Rankin, Henry B., quoted, 
34 

Rationalism, 193 

Rauschenbusch, Professor 
Walter, quoted, 168 

Reformation, period of, 
considered, 130 

Reformation, the, handi- 
capped by dogmas, 131; 
only partial release from 
abuses of Rome effected 
by, 217 



270 



INDEX 



Relations of God with the 
human soul, 9 

Religion, an inseparable 
feature of, 24. 

Religion, Christian, dis- 
cussed, 110, 111 

Religion, Hebrew, dis- 
cussed, 112, 113 

"Religious Experience," a 
subject of ages-long dis- 
cussion, 9, 10; the term, 
why chosen, 23. 

Religious faiths, hetero- 
geneous, attitude of, 25 

Religious life, psychic phe- 
nomena of, 87 

Religious question, the, 
vastness of, 23 

Religious views destined to 
fail, 24 

Revelation, final ideal of, 
189 

Rich, the exceptional temp- 
tations of, 237 

Richard, Timothy, referred 
to, 181 

Ridley, Nicholas, martyr- 
dom of, 155 

Roman age, at time of in- 
troduction of Christian- 
ity, 199 

Rome, cosmopolitan in its 
philosophy and religion, 
117; former power of, 
200 

Saul of Tarsus, conversion 
of, 91; courage of, 93; 



death of, 93; first im- 
pulse of after conver- 
sion, 175 

Science, position of, rela- 
tive to laws of nature, 
48; what it can and 
cannot do, 88; contribu- 
tive to a world-demo- 
cracy of intelligence, 236 

Schaff, Philip, quoted, 192 

Scriptures, critical study 
of, considered a sin by 
some, 70 

Seneca, referred to, 150; 
suicide of, 151 

Service, the law of Chris- 
tian life, 78; the modern 
Christian demand for, 
186 

Shakespeare, cited, 249 

Silas, spirit of, under per- 
secution, 148 

Skepticism propagated in 
present-day thought, 10 

Slave, the, Christianity's 
service to, 225 

Smith, Robert Elmer, re- 
ferred to, 156 

Snaith, John, quoted, 132 

Society, a school for train- 
ing for service, 75; 
Christ's, idea of the 
moral renewal and re- 
construction of, 76 

Socrates, cited, 249 

"Song of the Shirt," re- 
ferred to, 251 

Spiritual fruits, 145 



INDEX 



271 



Spiritual opportunities, 
deadly indifference to- 
ward, 12 

Spiritual sense, the, 43; 
a racial posession, 45; 
potential in universal 
human nature, 47; to be 
philosophically reckoned 
with, 48; the organ 
through which God finds 
entrance into the soul, 
50; God's approach to 
the universal heart, 51; 
common to the race, 56; 

Soldier, the, fortitude of, 
157 

Spiritual things, worldly 
indifference toward, 11 

Starbuck, Edwin D., cited, 
46 

Stead, William, cited, 43 

Stoic, the, referred to, 152 

Stoicism, ancient, disci- 
plined character de- 
veloped in, 109; school 
of, 149; illustrious repre- 
sentatives of, 150; pro- 
vision of for suicide, 
151; insufficiency of the 
most perfect fortitude of, 
152 

Strong, Dr. Josiah, quoted, 
168 

"Superman," mission of, 
10 

Symonds, J. A., cited, 44 

Taylor, Father, quoted, 33 



Tennyson, Alfred, cited, 

44; quoted, 169 
Tertullian, quoted, 120; 

scenes witnessed by, 157 
Thoburn, Bishop James M., 

referred to, 181 
Trance, defined, 43; 

vision of Saint Peter in, 

44 



Universe, moral, forces of, 
26 



War, a destroyer of indi- 
vidual rights, 219 

Wealth, as such not de- 
nounced by Christ, 227 

Webster, Noah, "charac- 
ter" defined by, 107 

Wesley, Charles, hymn of 
on conversion, 159; 
hymn written by, 160; 
quoted, 232 

Wesley, John, qualities of, 
132 ; evangelical career 
and death of, 133; ex- 
perience of, 159; quoted, 
206 

Wesleyan Revival in Eng- 
land, 205; period of, 206; 
fruits of, 209 

Whitefield, George, re- 
ferred to, 208 

Whittier, John G., quoted, 
106 

Wilson, Canon James Mau- 
rice, quoted, 61 



272 



INDEX 



Woolman, John, experience Xavier, Francisco, referred 

of, 156 t0 > 18 ° 
Wordsworth, William, 

quoted, 146 Zeno, founder of school of 

World, the, scientific unity Stoicism, 149 

of 51 Zeus, referred to, 151 

Wycliffe, referred to, 130 Zwingli, referred to, 130 



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